Vigilante Criminality: Drown in the Waters of Life
by LostCompass
Summary: Part of you has to duck its head in the wastes, forget how to regret and forget how to feel. For those who dwelled underground, it isn't so simple. Bullet fog and shrapnel become your escape.
1. Cracked Walls Crumble, Casings Tumble

All of the Fallout franchise belongs to Black Isle, Bethesda, and Obsidian. Not me.

* * *

_"Stop it! This isn't solving anything!"_

_But I didn't care. Couldn't care. Blood was running down the right side of my face, my jaw not settling back into place just right. Butch's nose was twisted the wrong way, his face red with young bruises; he was squinting to try and see through the tears of pain. But we were both grinning, grinning like animals without a care in our little metal cage. Amata's yelling was a distant, faded tune to our combat, complementing the cracks of our bloodied knuckles just right. He and I were both hunched, circling each other like starving, bloodthirsty dogs. Then suddenly he lunged forward, fist pulled back, but just before he could snap into his signature right hook I drove my knee into his stomach. He jackknifed, fell to his knees, and stayed there for a long minute._

_I backed off, still standing, rubbing my knuckles. The thrill, the rush was ebbing away, replaced by the unsteady pounding of my heart, an ache in my jaw and fists and shoulders.  
_

_"Shit," he coughed. "Pretty good."_

_"Yeah, yeah, says the one who taught me how to fight," I mumbled around a broken jaw. I extended a hand and pulled him up, but he still stood with a slight hunch. "Guess we should go take that test."_

_Butch nodded absently as he turned to his crew and motioned to them sharply. "Let's roll, Tunnel Snakes!" The three leather-jacketed members trailed after their limping leader, glancing at me apprehensively. I grinned at them, only to regret it as pain slammed into the floor of my mouth._

_"Fuck," I grated._

_With an exasperated sigh, Amata uncrossed her arms. "What the hell was that? He was about to go when you told him about the Overseer, why did you punch him-?"_

_"He was being an ass to you." I massaged my jaw gently as we turned and walked toward the classroom. I could hear Dad lecturing me right then: "Just because I'm a doctor doesn't mean you're obligated to go and get all your bones broken. But hey, I saw what you did to Butch- bit of the 'ol one-two, eh? Ha!"_

_I smiled. And regretted it, again._

_Amata sighed again. Must be that teenage phase. "Well, thanks. Even if it was a stupid thing to do."_

_"Yeah, yeah," I mumbled, eying the empty desk in the very front row. With Mr. Brotch standing in front of it, tapping his foot impatiently. Great. Just great._

* * *

I blinked. Jericho was sitting next to me in the dirt, crumpled pack of Marlboros at his feet as he smoked his last one, eyes closed in nicotine bliss. "You think you're going to die today?" I rasped mildly.

Startled, the half-burned cigarette nearly tumbled out his mouth. "What the- _shit_, kid. You ain't said nothin' in like an hour. Thought you was asleep or somethin'."

Frowning, I scratched some sand out of my bristling beard. "What? How-"

"Okay, maybe two."

I looked up at the sky, searching for the sun to tell the time, just like how Jericho showed me. And- yeah. Seven o'clock, give or take, the dusty clouds streaked with rusty red. "You know, I- I think I might've had a flashback," I murmured, trying to remember. Butch's blood on my knuckles, Amata's eyes wide with concern...

Jericho blew out a long cloud of smoke, making my eyes sting. "Fuckin' great, kid. If I knew you was gonna crack, I would'a let you have the last one."

If I could still smile, I might have. "It's alright.". But obviously, it wasn't. My hands were shaking from gripping my Mosin-Nagant so tightly, and hunger kept me in a constant crouch to ease the hollow feeling. It had taken me the longest time to realize that Jericho didn't just smoke to stay calm, he did it to ignore the stabs in his stomach.

I pried my hands from my rifle for a moment, flexing my fingers to get warm blood back into them. But they stayed cold, and even the bandages I had wrapped around them didn't seem to help much. Cold- cold with panic sweat. Having my hands do something made me feel a bit better, so I gripped my rifle again, peering into the chamber thoughtfully. "Have they moved?"

"Not a fuckin' muscle." Jericho blew another cloud, coughing as he did so. He wiped at his mouth, leaving a patch of red on the sleeve of his field jacket. "Gah,_ shit_, not this crap again..."

I wiggled my toes in my boots. I never had been the most patient of people. And sitting in the middle of a minefield with snipers waiting for you to get bored as you wait for nightfall so you can escape-

Wait, _wait_. You have no idea what I'm talking about. Okay, let me try again.

Maybe eleven hours ago, when we still had daylight, I caught wind of some easy money. Sitting in Moriarty's, these two half-dead looking scavengers were going on about a settlement that had been attacked by raiders, but somehow killed those marauding bastards then and there. I hardly believed that, but the idea of all that raider loot just sitting there was too much to ignore. Megaton's weapons and armor trade had gone stale, and I was running out of rounds for my Mosin-Nagant. Jericho had only two magazines left for his AKS-74U, and we had one RGD-5 grenade between us. My Mauser C-96 was dry, as was his Makarov PM.

No morphine, no food, no money. Not a good set up. So we thought, hey, let's go pay these raider-killers a visit, do a little trading, maybe some errands for a bit of good will. Couldn't hurt.

Jericho liked the sound of easy money (or, easy cigarettes), and as long as we weren't going east to fight those killing-machine mutants he wouldn't shut up about, he was up for it.

Maybe we should've noticed that something was wrong when we had gone twenty miles north, hardly stopping in our excitement, and then finally noticed that we were surrounded by land mines. Rusted to the color of dirt, we hadn't even realized we were in danger. Nope, the idea of all those guns just waiting for us, those traders and their open arms- had gone and blinded us.

Jericho wouldn't keep his mouth shut after that. "How the fuck didn't you notice? What the fuck was you thinking?" he would rant, digging through his pouches for a cigarette, then a light, then losing track of the cigarette and starting all over. But really, I didn't mind. Having him flip out kept me awake and focused on those little brown disks of explosive shrapnel-y death. I couldn't tell what kind of mines they were- PMN, maybe TM series- but then again, not like I could pick them up and take a long hard look.

Now and again, we'd come across an arm, or a foot, or sometimes when we got lucky, a jagged chunk of skull with shriveled brain still stuck to it. No wonder these guys had taken out an entire band of raiders- they didn't have to lift a finger with this sea of land mines protecting them. Problem was, where was the island? The question became heavier and heavier on my mind when dusk fell and we were still tip-toeing through mines, not a single soul anywhere. At least the sun wasn't in our eyes. Jericho spat when I pointed it out, mumbling about how he never would've done something like that ten years ago.

But things turned up. We finally found what looked like a town- well, part of a suburb- so there had to be settlers nearby. And stepping carefully onto the street, I noticed a figure standing on the roof of a townhome, its back to us. The town watch? Finally.

"Hey!" I howled. Jericho froze.

The figure turned, and without pause, raised its rifle.

Jericho grabbed the back of my collar and threw me to the ground as three rounds whistled by. We clambered to the nearest burnt-out house, expecting any second to be blown to pieces by a wrong step, but luck was on our side and we had our backs to a solid wall, and ten square feet without land mines. Oh, sure, we had a sniper to deal with, but who could've cared? We had a little plot of land that wouldn't blow up if it didn't like us. Can't say no to that!

I stuck a hand above the top of the wall. "We aren't raiders! Just want to trade!" I hollered. Another sharp report, another round that nearby took off my thumb. Jericho had slung his AKS-74U off his back and was scanning the area beyond the house for more people, but apparently saw nothing but land mines stretching into the distance. I pulled my Mosin-Nagant from my back, running a dirty finger along the round resting in the chamber. "They aren't disciplined, shooting like that," I pointed out.

"Yeah, or they has a fuckin' shitload of ammo."

Great. Didn't think of that.

* * *

And that explains how we got into that situation. A jackass with a SVD Dragunov standing on a roof with a couple of beers waiting for us to top our heads out to get blown apart. Or, at least, we thought it was that simple. Turns out we had three jackasses to deal with: the Dragunov guy, someone farther down the street with a SKS poking out of a broken window, and someone else with an AKM aiming out of the second story window of a house we had already passed. Boxed in like new meat. Jericho must've hated me right then.

"You know what, kid? I fuckin'_ hate_ you."

"Yeah."

"No, really, if we get out of this I'm gonna paint my walls with your brain."

"Yeah, I know."

I must've sounded calm, because Jericho swallowed the butt of his cigarette, washed it down with a handful of dirt, and handed me a small bottle of dirty water. "Take the shot."

"What?" I emptied the bottle in two gulps, licking the inside of the cap for good measure. My teeth crunched on grains of grit but I didn't care.

"You heard me, take the fucking shot. If we die at least no one will give a shit. That's somethin'."

What's sad is that's probably the truest and deepest thing Jericho ever said.

I nodded, sighed, and then something dawned on me. Amata would care. Butch would care. Dad would care.

Mom would care. Wouldn't she?

I popped up from cover and as soon as I did a round cut into my left shoulder, shallow enough to keep the socket from coming apart but enough to make my aim waver. I hurriedly steadied and fired, missing the Dragunov guy by three feet. Dammit, come on! It's only pain! I ducked into cover, chambered another round with a grinding effort, and popped up again. Jericho blind fired over the side toward the roof top, distracting the sniper long enough for me to put a bullet through his leg. Damn it, another foot and I would've had his chest! But it was enough to make him lose his balance and topple off the townhome, landing with a satisfying thump.

But as that guy was taken care of, the SKS guy had been firing away, his bullets knocking plaster our of our cover and making us duck down. We couldn't make it across the road. No way.

"I'll cover your ass! Move it!"

There wasn't a thought in my head as I jumped over some rubble and did a hopping jog through the house's backyard, eyes open for land mines. Jericho sent burst after burst of fire down the street, met with the single shots of the SKS. "You stupid fucks think you have a chance! You fucking think you have a fucking chance?" he screamed, and I could imagine his eyes glassed with his old raider rage.

I made it to the neighboring house, which hadn't been boarded up. Talk about luck, huh? I dashed in, crouched low, expecting anything. But then a few things clicked in my head:

1. All these houses were either burnt-out or almost untouched.  
2. The ones that weren't untouched weren't boarded up.  
3. There were people shooting at us from inside houses.  
4. Damn it.

I had taken three steps toward the open kitchen before a spray of buckshot peppered the wall less than a foot in front of me. I heard a familiar _cha-chack_ and hit the floor as another burst roared overhead.

He was standing in the open doorway, halfway through his _cha-chack_ when I put a bullet through his stomach. He gasped, stumbled back a few steps, aimed his TOZ-194 at me in vain- and fell onto his back.

I breathed out, began to chamber another round- But was interrupted by a "You son of a bitch!" and a girl running out of the kitchen, a cleaver in her hands. _Great._ She lunged towards me and brought the knife down hard. I brought my rifle up hard. The edge lodged in the wood, and I quickly kicked out her feet, sending her to the floor. I drew my own combat knife- jagged but blunt as Jericho's advances towards Nova- and drove it into her throat.

That was easy.

I never got used to how easy it was end a life. One minute she was glaring up at me, dirty hair spread out behind her like a fan, her mouth moving silently in swearing as it filled with bubbling blood.

I twisted, and she was gone.

Wrenching the knife from her neck, I wiped the blood off on my pants, scooped up my Mosin-Nagant, finished chambering it, and picked up the battered TOZ-194 in the kitchen, along with the four shells in the guy's pockets. The gunfire outside was still going, but now new sounds had joined the melee- four, five more against Jericho's AKS-74U.

I slung the shotgun onto my back and hurried upstairs, keeping my rifle shouldered the whole time. Choosing what used to be a bedroom, I pushed open the shutters and looked out.

Two guys taking cover behind a house. Another one sneaking through a backyard. The SKS guy was still alive and reloading. I couldn't see down the other side of the street. Jericho had resorted to single shots to conserve ammo- he couldn't have more then fifteen rounds left.

As I watched, the shutter on my left exploded in a spray of splinters. I dove back, covering my eyes. Pieces of wood were stuck in my left lid; I clamped it closed and exited the room, making my way down the stairs and pressing up against the wall next to the door. Glancing out I saw no one and made a quick dash to the next house- the mines were beginning to thin out. I was getting closer.

I rounded the next house, got a clear view of a guy moving up the street, and fired. The shot caught him in the arm, and he stumbled long enough for me to line up a shot through his middle. My impatience screwed me over, though, as the two who had been taking cover before dove out of cover and opened up at me. At least I was buying Jericho time. But he was trying to buy _me_ time...

In a house across the street, someone appeared in the broken window and started shooting. I rounded the house again, considered going inside, but instead clambered over the rotting fence into the next backyard, nearly landing on a mine. I took off at a run, trying to lean left to counter using only my right eye. I had no idea what to do. All I knew was that I wasn't leaving Jericho behind.

Strafing along the side of another house, I peeked around, saw no one-

A deafening "Fuck you!" and a volley of shots. Great. Jericho was running out of ammo, so he was resorting to words.

I sprinted down the street, my malnourished legs protesting at every step. Once I passed three houses, I turned, jumped over a backyard fence, moved into the street onto which the fight was raging-

Too many. There were six, maybe seven guys with their backs to me. Or girls, I don't know. I put a round through one, then two, but then had to take cover on the other side of the street. I could hear the footsteps of two or three trying to sneak up behind me. What was the point? It was over. You can't win a fight against four times your band. I'm not a hero.

"Jericho!" I thundered into the air. The footsteps stopped.

"What, kid?" he yelled back.

"You alive?"

"No shit, dumbass!"

The footsteps began again, but I had already loaded the TOZ-194. One came around the corner, Nagant M1895 raised, only to shoot and miss a crouching guy with a shotgun. Who didn't miss._ One._

I spun, hit the dirt, and as she poked her head around the corner, I reduced her head to meat- but not before she she squeezed a shot off that found its way into my ear. Rush of blood. _Two._

Blood was gushing out of the side of my head and I could hardly hear, but I could sort of squint with my left eye so that was an okay tradeoff. I got to my feet, looked around the corner and almost got a face full of AKM bullets. Okay, that's three, but how do I get him?

Another shot rang out, and a body dropped from the roof and landed less than a foot near me. A hole was neatly placed in the center of his forehead.

"Nice one, Jericho!" I hollered. I snatched the fallen guy's gun- a Zastava M76, not bad- placed the TOZ-194 and Mosin-Nagant on my back. I checked the magazine- twenty three bullets. But Jericho had apparently spent his last shot saving my life, so I decided to return the favor.

I went around the back of the house, almost forgetting to watch out for mines, and moved up two backyards, just before a burnt-out house that wouldn't give much cover. From the gunfire, there were four or five guys left, maybe more, not counting the AKM guy. I glanced around the corner and shot a few rounds into the window where the AKM guy was- only for a muzzleflash to appear in the window next to it, and a flash of pain to ignite in my leg.

I would've screamed, I really would've liked to, but that would've given my position away. I dove back behind the corner, laughing in my head as I heard more bullets impact the wood wall. _Way to waste bullets, dumbass._ But there were two he didn't waste that were buried in my upper leg, and I wasn't going anywhere.

But I was. "Kid!"

The pain flared. I wanted to call back to him, but a groan of pain was all I managed.

"Don't come back! Run!"

I couldn't do that. I couldn't run. Couldn't abandon Jericho like how I abandoned everyone else.

"Run!"

Like how my mom abandoned dad, how my dad abandoned me.

Lurching out of cover into the street, I fired into both windows of the AKM guy's house as I hobbled forward. Everything was a brown blur, between the sky and the pavement and the houses. My leg was slick with blood and I could feel those two bullets pounding away with my pulse. I was in so much pain time didn't register, and suddenly I was on the ground, staring at nothing.

An old boot came into view. I followed it up to find ripped up jeans, a brown leather jacket falling apart, and finally, a girl no older than me- her sweaty face twisted in anger.

Jericho was at gunpoint a little behind her, his bloodied bayonet at his feet. Blood and dust choked his beard, but when he looked at me, he was as calm as I'd ever seen him.

"Trade." My mouth was dry and my teeth hurt from gritting them so much.

"_What_ did you say?" the girl growled. Their leader, I guessed. Nine of them hung about her, three with their guns on Jericho.

"Just... wanted... to trade." I tried to swallow, but my throat wouldn't move right, so I coughed up blood instead. "So... so..." I got a kick in the bad leg. I howled in pain- the steel toe of her combat boot was as hard as hell.

"S-so... why'd you shoot?" I rasped shakily around shallow gasps. I was vaguely aware of my guns being pulled from my back. The girl herself stooped to pull my knife from its sheath.

"It's a wasteland, kid," she said, putting mocking emphasis on the last word. Jericho scowled. I was too tired to. "Got to kill to live. Right, Jericho?"

"Fuck you, whorin' bitch-ass cum-drippin' cunt." He got the butt of an AKM for that that sent him to the ground, but he chuckled all the same.

I tried to push myself up, but my arms trembled and they got kicked out from under me. My jaw stung. "Can't live forever. Might as well... live... peacefully..." So tired.

"Whatever, kid." She grabbed me roughly by the hair and pulled my face from the ground, placing my combat knife against my throat, enough that I could feel its bite. "That was my sister you killed. Where's your peace, huh, fuckhead? Big talk for a small raider!"

Maybe her eyes used to be gray, but they were so clouded with fury I couldn't tell. I smiled. "Can't live forever," I repeated. I didn't regret it. She screamed, and I felt the serrated blade sink its teeth into my throat. A flash of flame, of nothingness, and I left my body.

But I came back,_ and the body hurt and I wanted to leave and be dead where I couldn't feel pain_ but_ ten feet away was a bloody mess_ and the girl was flat on her face bleeding and I couldn't find Jericho but_ everyone looked dead but a few moved a bit and the girl tried to get up but their was shrapnel in her back and she cried out and _I couldn't find Jericho-

He used the last grenade _shit shit shit why did he do that-_

I pushed myself into a sitting position, my ears still ringing. Where Jericho and his captors used to be was a circle of blood and organs and limbs.

The girl was on her side, sobbing, contorted in agony as she jammed syrette after syrette into her back. _Seemed like a stupid thing to do, Jericho was dead and I was almost dead, not like she was in danger or anything._ I reached over and plucked my knife from her weak grip, ignoring the hands that scratched at my face and throat. I crawled over to Jericho's pieces. The pain in my leg was subsiding into a numb shock, but I was barely conscious. I rummaged through my pockets and found the cap to the water bottle he had given me. I put it next to _his eyes and his brain and his heart and his liver._

"Thanks," was all I could say. I fell asleep, clutching my knife close. Maybe I'd die.


	2. Like Someone Set the World on Fire

_"Come on, kid. Breathe in for the short shots, breath out for the long ones. Easy shit."_

_I peered down the rusting ironsights of my Mosin-Nagant, lining up on the unaware raider's chest, wondering if taking a life from far away was less haunting than taking one up close._

_It wasn't._

* * *

Gray and brown.

I opened my eyes, and right then I knew what it felt like to come straight out of a morgue. My blood seemed thick, refusing to travel all the way through my limbs, leaving me feeling numb and raw at the same time. I couldn't feel my right leg at all. That's weird, I thought.

Sickly brown light filtered through the shutters, painting white hot bars on the dirty carpet. I turned my head, neck twisting painfully, and stared at them a while. I squinted up at the smoke-stained ceiling, trying to work out the time and where I was and, for the most part, what the fuck was going on. But weariness made me close my eyes again, slip away into unconsciousness...

Until I noticed someone else in the room, anyway.

My eyes snapped open and I stopped breathing. With her back to me, perhaps she hadn't noticed me wake. Squatting over a pile of field stripped guns, she ran her fingers over each piece of metal, turning them and over again in her hands for any possible flaw. Next to her was a stack of pouches, belts and bandoleers. Hey, wait, wait-

Her! What the fuck? Why was-

She stiffened, and straightening, she turned to me. Those gray eyes. Those damn gray eyes.

"Hello... there," I whispered hoarsely, cracking a smile. Her eyes narrowed. In a few short steps, she had crossed the room, snatched up my combat knife from the bedside table (which pretty much gave me a heart attack) and went directly back to her gun maintenance, using my knife to pry some pieces apart or something. Okay. Okay. I could make sense of this. Sooner or later, I would...

I propped myself up onto my elbows, feeling my back protest with the effort, and slowly swung my legs over the side of the mattress. Or, swung my left leg, dragged my right leg. But in a sitting position, I was hit with a wave of nausea and soreness, hunched my shoulders to try and ignore it, gritted my teeth when I felt at the cut in my left shoulder. It was deeper than I remembered. Damn it.

I felt at the cut, expecting to find a bleeding gash, but instead felt my splintered fingernails scrabble at stitches. What the hell? How...

So tired. I pressed a hand against my right leg, punched my right knee a few times to test for reflexes- no good. That was weird, too. There was a strip of cloth wrapped tightly around where those two bullets had bitten into my leg. A small, but sensitive red dot lay right next to it. I suddenly noticed the empty (though not too clean) syringe on the bedside table. Was that... morphine? I also noticed that I was in my boxers and they were bloodier than I remembered.

This wasn't happening. There was just... no way.

So I didn't say anything for a long time. I just sat there, rubbing feeling into my leg, picking at my shoulder, watching her work. Remembering, I touched at my throat, where I found a thin, painful line crusted with blood. I remembered Dad saying something about only fearing fear itself, but to be straightforward I was fucking terrified. Or, half dead tired, half fucking terrified. I had almost reached the point where death didn't seem so bad. But Jericho... like hell I'd let him die in vain.

Oh, God. Jericho. That was enough to wear out my patience. "Okay, look-"

"Shut the fuck up." There was no emotion in her voice. Just a statement.

I paused for a full second, mouth open in mid-word. Seriously? "That's... uh, great. Really, it is. But if you're going to kill me-"

Next thing I knew I was staring down the barrel of a Nagant M1895. My balls jumped at that.

"Look," she said coldly. I would have, but my eyes were locked on the revolver in my face. "There are a fuckload of raiders coming this way. Either you help or this is your breakfast."

I blinked, and managed to rip my eyes from the barrel for just a moment. "Help with... what?"

"Killing them off, you ass."

"Sorry, what?" I slurred. "Yesterday two starved guys walked into your town and killed your entire band." Her knuckles whitened on the grip. "So now-" I coughed-"now, a starved guy and pissy girl are going to take on a raider army? Okay."

That was the morphine talking. Really, it was. My balls jumped another foot when that barrel was pressed against my forehead. "You're starting to look pretty hungry."

Shit, shit, shit. "Okay, okay," I said hastily. "Look, I'll... I'll help." I waited for her to pull the gun away. Once she did, "But look. We can't fight. I mean, I'm half dead, and you're one gun."

"So you want to run?"

"Well... let's make it a jog," I grinned sheepishly, rubbing my leg. She wasn't smiling.

She crossed the room and tossed me my duster, boots, fatigues. All of which were stripped of ammo. Great. I struggled with my pants for a good two minutes before she spat, "Can you even walk?"

"With two holes in my leg, yeah, no problem," I grunted as I got my right leg through.

"I didn't blow that morphine on you so you could bitch about it." But she laid my Mosin-Nagant against the side of the bed. Just what I was thinking: a crutch. But then she came over with something else. "Lay back."

A... stimpack? She held it like it could turn to dust in her hands any second. I had only used one once before after getting a kidney popped with a 9mm, and I wasn't looking forward to using one again. Sure, it was better than death, I guess, but put you in such a doped-out state you could hardly see straight. She held my leg down and stabbed the needle (didn't look clean) straight into one of the bullet holes, making me throw my head back and grit my teeth at the sudden shock of agony. Tears blurred my vision, but I could see clearly enough she only used a third of the whole stim. Even so, my leg felt like it had been plunged in needly ice water and started twitching. At least I wasn't doped out.

It took us maybe another five minutes of gearing up. I hobbled over to the pile of weaponry, strapping on my bandoleers and pouches. She nearly bit my head off when I reached for my C-96 Mauser.

"This one's mine, remember?" I reminded her, careful to keep my tone neutral. Eyes always narrowed, she nodded. Like I needed her permission. Bitch.

But she eventually got used to the idea that we'd be gunbuddies, so I got to handle the TOZ-194 I had 'borrowed' from the day before. Jericho's AKS-74U caught my eye, and I grabbed it before she could say anything. I couldn't find his AK-74 bayonet. But I got more 7.62x54mmR rounds for my Mosin-Nagant, thanks to the Dragunov guy, and a leather bandoleer of thirteen or so shotgun shells. When those scavengers in Megaton had gone on about how these guys were loaded, they probably hadn't considered they were putting it all to constant use. Three 5.45x39mm mags for the AKS-74U was great, don't get me wrong, but I had expected a bit more. At least I got a RGD-5 grenade out of it. While she got three. Bitch.

Speaking of which, she armed herself with the SVD Dragunov and the AKM, having three mags for the former and four for the latter. And the Nagant M1895. And three RGD-5s. Why do I always get the crap?

We had to leave behind the SKS. Jericho's Makarov was destroyed in the explosion. She had wanted to take along more guns, but I pointed out that four for me and three for her, plus ammo, was more than enough for an escape from raiders. She claimed with complete seriousness that it wasn't. Okay, by her view either they were packing PK machine guns or were bulletproof.

I walked out of the house and into the street (yes, walked. Stimpacks might not heal you completely, but they give you the illusion) and approached the mass of blood and bone and flesh that used to be her band. That used to be Jericho. She had taken all the guns from the scene, but hadn't touched the bodies. I didn't blame her.

I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to remember what Jericho looked like. Kind of like Dad. Maybe that's why I always trusted him.

"You ready?"

"Yeah," I said without turning around. She headed west, walking through the land mines like they weren't even there. I followed more carefully.

Hell, I didn't even know her name. Survival is survival.


	3. Partners Don't Part

_"Really, I couldn't possibly-"_

_"No, you've done so much for us. Here, take it."_

_I looked down at the four caps dropped into my cupped hands. Enough to live for a day. My heart hammered with the idea of food as opposed to chewing on irradiated grass again, but..._

_"You're sure? Really?"_

_She nodded earnestly, with a smile that showed yellow, worn down teeth. "You've earned it."_

_I swallowed. "O... Okay. Thank you."_

_The settler beamed, and with a cheerful goodbye turned and walked back into the dusty streets of Megaton. My hands closed into fists, gripping the caps so hard they left marks._

_"What, goin' soft on me already, kid?" Jericho was leaning against the handrail of Craterside Supply's deck, smoking a cigarette stub. "That ain't gonna happen again. You gotta learn not to trust anyone."_

_I leaned my elbows on the rail beside him, trying to ignore the warping sounds the iron made under my weight. "So, just do the whole lone wanderer thing, you mean? Totally alone?"_

_"You got it." He pulled a bobby pin from one of his field jacket's pouches and raked it through his beard, combing for mutant fleas. "I don't trust no one. That's how I'm still breathin', kid."_

_"You trust me?" I asked as a few fleas hopped out of his beard to the street level._

_He didn't say anything, just puffed on his cigarette and stared at the dusty brown sky, watching the vultures soar lazily overhead._

_"Jericho, I said, do you-"_

_"You got caps. Let's booze it." Without looking at me he spun on his heel and stomped off towards Moriarty's, AKS-74U bouncing against his back as he tugged at the strap._

_I scratched my beard, and followed._

_

* * *

_

We had been walking for a few hours, and it was nearly twelve o'clock, our shadows almost gone. I was thankful for that; having the sun at your back made it harder to spot land mines, your shadow being in the way and all that. But I didn't need to worry, because my new... traveling 'partner'... knew her way through the sea of mines like she grew up swimming in it. Still made me jumpy, though, watching her walk along with hardly a second glance to where she was going.

_Damn_ was it hot. It was either burning hot during the day or freezing cold in the nighttime or radioactively... itchy-crawly under your skin... pretty much_ all _the time. All extremes out here. Stupid ass atmosphere can't give anyone a break.

My leg was itchy all over. I didn't remember that being a side effect of a stimpack, but I was knocked out the only other time I had used one, so what do I know. This turned out to be a problem; even though she walking in front of me, leading the way, she still seemed to be watching me. Whenever I reached down to scratch my leg, she would stiffen and slow down- making sure I wasn't reaching for my holster. I probably should've guessed she wasn't keeping her Nagant M1895 in hand for a compass. But I sort of expected that sort of high-strung-ness from wastelander types. From what I had seen rolling with Jericho, one wrong move, word, facial expression- and it became a shooting gallery.

All that time gave me time to think. When I had a few feet of plain old non-explosive dirt underfoot, my mind would wander. How long had her band stayed in that town? They were terribly low on supplies- I mean, hell, for 'food' all she brought along in a backpack was a half-smoked pack of Marlboros and a few bottles of whiskey. Yeah, great. So much for a great trading opportunity. What was I thinking?

And I wondered about her. Didn't know her name, where she came from, what she was up to. Okay, I knew she had a sister (dead. Thanks to me. Great chatting material.), knew she had led that band. Didn't know enough to trust her, that was for sure. What else, what else. Sleeveless leather jacket with a bunch of holes, bandages all over her arms, long leather gloves going on to her forearms, ripped faded jeans. Short dirty hair roughly cut, but long enough to get a fistful of- rookie mistake. Okay, she obviously wasn't a hardcore soldier, that's a start. But I thought, hey, might as well try, right?

"Uh, hey," I began. She glanced back for a second before stepping expertly over a mine. "Guess we should get to know each other." She didn't say anything, but her grip tightened on the handle of her revolver. I took a deep breath, and continued. "So, my name's-"

"I _don't_ care who the fuck you are."

"You sure? Don't want to know the name of your sister's killer? Really?"

Bad move. She spun, and for the second time that day, put that gun up against my forehead. I stopped dead, my eyes crossed in trying to see the barrel.

"I don't know how you're alive. _I don't._ Because you have a way of making everyone want to kill you. First Stan, the rest of my friends, me. You're pretty much walking corpsemeat," she hissed, pressing the muzzle hard enough to make me tilt my head back.

"Ain't that something. Looks like Stan- Dragunov guy- shotgun guy, your knife-crazy sister, and everyone else are dead. Guess people who want to kill me have this way of just- killing themselves all over me."

The morphine. I'm telling you, it was the morphine.

Her face went stark white behind the dust and grime, and she was biting down on a cracked and dry lip so hard it bled. She could've blown my brains across the wastes right there. At that second, with Jericho gone and hungry as fuck and my shoulder and leg itching, and damn it how the hell would I find Dad now without a guide- I almost wanted her to.

I lucked out. Instead of a bullet, I got a pistol whip. Now I had the bloody lip. Ha ha. "So what's your name?" I asked, licking the split in my lip, wincing at the sand stuck in it.

"You'll be dead soon. Doesn't matter." Yeah. Great partners. Great.

Now she got all angsty at me. Hurry up, watch it, keep your hands where I can see them. Just like that she was all talkative- if bitching at me most of the time. Hell, I couldn't take a piss without her yelling at me not to hit a land mine. What the hell.

But she was my only way out of that Bermuda triangle of explosions, so I put up with it. Jericho wouldn't put up with this crap, I thought darkly as she lit a cigarette. She had matches? Damn. Maybe this wasn't a total loss.

Okay, hour later. More walking, it s hotter than fuck, we make it to the top of a pretty high hill, and out of nowhere she hits the dirt. I hurry over the respectful ten-foot-distance we had been keeping and extend a hand to pull her up, when suddenly a thought hit me like a vodka with a golf ball at the bottom: sniper.

I panicked and looked around, but the second that thought entered my head she grabbed my outstretched arm and pulled me down to the ground. Spitting grit out of my mouth, I rolled off of her onto my stomach.

"The hell are you doing?"

She didn't say anything. Barely moving, she reached over her shoulder and drew her Dragunov SVD. Understanding, I slung off my Mosin-Nagant, feeling for the bandoleer with the 7.62x54mmR rounds. "What do you see?" I whispered.

And, as usual, she responded with... nothing. She just peered through her sniper rifle's PSO-1 scope, her left eye squeezed shut. I sighed, and squinted into the dusty haze of the distance. At first, nothing, just more desolate hills and plains.

But gradually, ever so slowly, out of those ground-hugging, scuttling and swirling clouds came three shadows. I blinked a few times, rubbed the dirt out of my eyes (and got more in, nice one), and squinted harder. But I could barely see, and the wind was picking up. The sky was blanketed with a fine mist of dust, darkening the world and leaving the sun a pale eye in the sky. I grit my teeth, growing more nervous by the second.

I couldn't take the suspense. I gently nudged her face out of the way with my forehead, and took a peek through the scope. The lens was all scratched up and smudged and there was sand on the inside, but for what I saw I might as well have been standing right there.

Three guys. Not just guys, men. Manly men. All wearing armor of leather and scrap metal and bone welded or sewn together in random places, bone spikes jutting out at every joint. The first carried a VSS Vintorez and OTs-14 Groza on his back, his body covered seemingly wrapped in bandoleers, his belt weighed down with maybe ten RGD-5 grenades. The second wore an eyepatch and had a OSV-96 anti-materiel rifle slung over his back- an ordinary fucking tank buster! How did he carry the damn thing?- and was covered in sheathes for more bayonets I could count. But the third...

Well... _shit._

In the wasteland, as a raider, basically the crazier you look like, the more of a challenge it is to other raiders. So, a mohawk, piercings, tattoos, whatever? Yep, that's a challenge.

But this guy was just a level above that crap. He must've been seven feet tall, so buff it looked like his veins were going to pop out of his armor, and had a filthy beard that went to his fucking chest. But get this- his beard was braided into three huge-ass braids, and each one at a little skull carved out of bone on the end. His hair- fucking long as hell- was braided into weird dreadlocks, tied down with bleached fangs longer than your fingers as beads, and his hair and beard were braided into each other. His face was all scarred up, maybe from fighting, or maybe he did it ritually to show those tattoo punks how it was really done. His armor- oh, man. He had Deathclaw bull skulls on each shoulder, their horns curving like something demonic. His gloves were plated with skeletal Deathclaw claws, the talons going over his hands by a foot. A fucking spinal cord was wrapped around his neck like a necklace. Fuck!

On his back, a PK machine gun. On his front, a RGS-50 grenade launcher. In his thigh holster, a big revolver I had never seen before. His battle-scarred scrap metal armor, turned a gunmetal gray from wear and tear, was covered in pouches for 7.62x54mmR ammo boxes and launchable frag grenades. And bones. More bones, rattling away.

I felt my organs twist inside of me, just feeling the weight of all those bullets. I didn't want to die. Not here, not like this.

I pulled away from the scope, feeling sick. I put my Mosin-Nagant back on my back, and slowly crawled backward down the hill, trying to make as little noise and movement as possible. She looked back at me, her gray eyes burning with... I don't know. More anger. _You pussy! Come on! Fight!_ I could see it in her eyes.

I just shook my head, and kept crawling through the dirt.

She spat, lit another cigarette, and took aim.

I was about to scream a cliche "No!" When I was interrupted by her gunshot, deafening in the waste's quiet. The second the round was fired, all three of the shadow raiders broke formation and dashed into cover. They wasted no time moving from rock to hill to stump, advancing easily, guns trained on the hilltop. They weren't just raiders. They were the result of every settler's- no, every wastelander's suffering, pain, hopelessness- wrapped into people-sized packages of senseless hatred, senseless killing. I felt my own presence in them as they slowly approached, yard by yard, that anger towards the very soil I walked on.

Two hundred yards. They were two hundred yards away, and she had already gone through two of her mags. She loaded the last one, biting down on her cigarette as she did so and sliced it in half.

A hundred fifty yards. She lobbed a RGD-5 to get them out of cover, but they just scattered tactically into different cover. She tried another, with the same result.

A hundred yards. Streaks of sweat cut lines down her ashen face, got in her eyes, dripped down her nose. She was panting, her cracked lips bleeding. I watched but couldn't fight couldn't die _no way death is for squares and I am shaped like a gear just like dear old Dad-_

The leader of the shadow raiders slung the PK machine gun from his back, and calm as could be, took aim.

She stood up, getting a bigger field of vision, firing wildly now, not even correcting her recoil. But he stood, unmoved, raised his finger to the trigger.

_No way in hell, a hundred yards with a medium machine gun? Yeah right._

From a hundred yards away, a single bullet from a medium machine gun crashed through her chest, leaving nothing but a view of the sky behind.

She toppled backwards, rolled down the hill. I yelled something I don't remember and bound after her, stumbling over myself and my damn leg before I slid to my knees before her.

Her hands were clutching her chest, maybe looking for the heart that wasn't there anyone. But the light in her eyes was starting to fade, the sprays of blood spurting from her chest with less force.

"No! Stay- stay awake!" I screamed at her as her head began to loll back. I put a hand behind her head, my fingers tangled in her bloody hair. She looked at me like she had never seen me before.

"I- I-" What do you say to someone who's good as dead? "I'm so- sorry! For- for your sister, your friends, everything! God, I never said anything before, but... but... I can't get it out of my head!" My jaw hurt from talking so much. "Please- please- I'm sorry!"

She couldn't talk. Her mouth was full of blood. But her softening eyes and twitching lips said enough. _"It's a wasteland, kid. Got to kill to live. But I'll never forgive you."_

I remembered. I lifted her carefully and pulled the stimpack from one of her pouches. Gently as I could, I plunged the needle into her open chest and hit the valve- but she just shook her head, so weakly I barely noticed. Her left hand fell towards her side, brushing something long. I reached for it- my combat knife. I looked back to her eyes, but there was nothing there. The spurts of blood slowly came to a bubbling stop.

Kneeling in her pool of blood, I clutched my knife close to me. My other hand held hers, squeezing to the rhythm of a heart that wasn't there.

The shadow raiders came down the hill, weapons drawn, looking even more terrifying close up. Their leader had a deranged grin splitting his face in two. His teeth were sharp.

Maybe I'd die.


	4. Brushing Shoulders, Brushing Skulls

_"That ol' shitpit Springdale, huh?"_

_I nodded, staring off into the cigarette smoke. "That's what it became to me. This... wasteland." I pushed the smudged glass of cheap stale beer across the counter to Jericho, unable to stomach any more. He gulped it down gladly,_

_"I don't- I can't understand it," I continued, clenching my hands into fists. "Just... piles of bones. Corpses strung up with chains, hanging on meathooks. Bodies just lying around in the halls, bloody footprints everywhere, body parts in lockers, desks, cabinets, random words written across chalkboards in blood..."_

_Jericho was peering into the empty glass, picking his teeth for grains of sand with a bobby pin. Even so, his mind seemed far away as he listened._

_"And I heard them. Laughing, yelling, eating, fucking- like everything was fine. I just- I couldn't take it. I snuck back the way I came in, and ran far away as fast as I could until-" I stopped for breath,_  
_coughed a bit- "Until I saw this place in the distance." I shook my head and dust fell from my beard. "How do they do it?"_

_With a grunt, Jericho put the glass down and scratched at a crack in the rim with a splintered fingernail. "They just do it, kid. Raiders don't... y'know, think. They let their balls do the thinkin' for 'em, and just follow along."_

_"That's insane."_

_"No shit. But, y'know, it's best you saw all that crap."_

_I chuckled dryly. "Right. The best thing for someone right out a Vault is to walk into a lair of homicidal cannibal maniacs. Yeah, great first impression."_

_Jericho puffed on his cigarette stub, uncharacteristically patient. "Now you know what's out there. What they can do, what they will do. Wish I learned as early as you, kid."_

_My hands were still shaking, even though it had been three days. But you never get used to it, never never never, all those headless bodies floating in the air on twisty turny chains and pointing at you with fingerless hands or stub arms and screaming get out get out get out but there's no voices but you can hear them and upstairs they're laughing and chewing on bone and fear and they can smell your fear and all the doors lead to the same classroom where good morning class good morning students lets start with today's lesson DIE_

_

* * *

_

I blinked. And I blinked again, as a nightmarish face was peering down at me with clouded, bloodshot eyes. But he was smiling, and his teeth were sharp. Did he... file them, or something? Guess some raiders would do anything for the intimidation factor.

Okay. Surrounded by three of the most badass raiders I had ever seen, my only ally dead at my knees, and I'm having chronic flashback disorder.

Great.

"Good hunting."

Wait, what?

"What?"

The monstrous shadow raider looked at me, smiling still, but there was something else in his face- but behind the scars and bloody clay that had caked onto his face like a cracked second skin, I couldn't tell. "Even the strongest hunter does not simply walk through Amputee's Field," he explained. His voice was incredibly deep, so heavy with self-assurance and experience it seemed to echo. Made my ears hurt.  
"So instead, you used your wisdom to defeat the snipers of the Field."

I stared at him blankly. Well, stared at his teeth. They were all yellow and brown and had bits of red stuck in them. Between those and the huge Brahmin bull skulls on his shoulders, I couldn't look at his face.

"Do think he's gone daft, gov," piped up the shadow raider pointing the Groza at me. What a weird accent, like the ones Mr. Handy's had...

"How..." my throat seemed drier than usual, if that was possible. "How..."

"How do we know you aren't one of the Field's mighty snipers?" the tall one finished, slinging his PK machine gun over his back as if it weighed nothing. "Simple, young hunter; your Mosin-Nagant is on the right side of your back. You are right-handed, from the way you are holding your knife. Therefore, the Mosin-Nagant is your choice gun. Of all the months we've hunted the snipers of Amputee's Field, we have never heard the crack of a Mosin-Nagant."

I continued staring blankly, but now my eyes were blurring with confusion. Was he... for real? I didn't have much time to think about it, however, as the eyepatched shadow raider with the OSV-96 rifle had stepped forward and pulled away my guns. I felt a flash of hopelessness as I watched Jericho's AKS-74U be pulled from my front. He turned to the fallen girl and bent to take her Dragunov, and in a moment of pure stupidity I stumbled forward and threw my arms over her body.

"No," I rasped.

Eyepatch raider glared at me with his good eye and sent me stumbling onto my ass with an elbow to the forehead. I grit my teeth and clutched at my leg, squeezing my eyes shut as I felt the wounds break open. As the raiders helped themselves to her guns and ammo, the leader walked up to me and yanked my knife from my weakened grasp. He looked at my duster in contempt. The mark of a rookie, I guess.

I coughed up dust. "Months?" No way.

"For seven months, we had assaulted that settlement. Weakling new meat would try to walk the Field, and die. We waited, and drove them to fear. We wanted to starve them out, but..." he looked down at me. Was he impressed, or enraged that I had stolen his rightful kills?

"Dead is bleedin' ol' dead," cut in the Groza raider.

"How many had ridden with your band?" asked the leader.

They thought I was an upstart raider. They thought I had gone in to kill those people. "Two," I whispered. What was the point of lying? They were going to kill me anyway.

"Two, eh?" chirped the grenade-strapped raider, clipping on the gray-eyed girl's grenades to his collection. "Nutty twat. Must'a been all sixes an' sevens."

My head was pounding, my leg was starting to spasm, and the sun was reaching its brightest. I must've looked like a corpse. Even so, the leader spoke to me as though I were an equal. "Of course, a lone hunter could never kill all the snipers of Amputee's Field." He peered at me closely, narrowed eyes bloodshot and milky but cutting right through me. "Still, for only two to bring down so many..."

"His name was Jericho," I said suddenly. The one with the eyepatch looked up from the girl's body. All three of them seemed to stiffen. Terror gripped me, and I felt the death blow hovering right over my head,  
ready to fall if I breathed wrong.

The leader stopped smiling. His armor was rattling, bones and talismans and metal clinking together. I realized he was shaking with rage. "The fearless blood butcher Jericho," he hissed, "fought alongside you?"

"Um. Yeah."

The leader straightened, nodded to his companions, and without a glance backward they gathered up their loot and began walking west. The eyepatch raider had the girl's body slung over his shoulder- shit, shit, shit, of course they were cannibals. Dammit. But there was nothing I could do. So I lay there, staring up at a careless sun what are you looking at think it s funny to watch someone die you stupid ball of flaming gas when you die no one will be there to care. Something clicked in my head.

"Why... didn't you kill me?" I called after them, my voice cracking with the effort.

"We are killing you," called back the leader, his voice so faint I almost didn't hear him as I slowly passed out. My hands felt empty without my knife.


	5. Sky Ain't a Map

_Jericho blew a cloud of smoke into the air. "This is a waste of time, kid."_

_I didn't bother to look up from the mess of wires and switches in front of me. Was a lot more complicated than I thought it would be, and the heavy radiation suit I had leased from Moira was making the already hot day a hell of a lot worse. Not to mention, the glove parts were all stiff and thick, making it hard to get the switches and buttons just right._

_"I mean, shit, there must be fifty people livin' here who don't know how to work the thing..."_

_I made a few careful snips, wincing whenever a wire would take more than the usual amount of force to snap. Making a path for my hand, I reached into the wire jungle, felt around for it..._

_"Look at Cromwell, shit, if bombs had dicks he'd be sucking this one. And- are you even listening to me?"_

_I shoved the small dial in Jericho's face, and he stepped back, blinking in surprise._

_"Thirty three to go," I said with a smirk, the radiation suit distorting my voice._

_

* * *

_

Back in the vault, the Overseer would go on and on about productivity. That must've been his favorite word, next to efficiency, effectiveness, usefulness, and... just about any words like that. So he'd separate the days as he saw them, calling them either 'good days' or 'bad days'. I always found that kind of pointless. Living in a vault, almost everything we did was backed up by computerized failsafes anyway, so if the klaxons weren't going off, really now, I thought a one percent dip in productivity would be okay.

I had finally figured out what a bad day was.

It had been six hours since the shadow raiders had appeared out of the dust and killed the gray-eyed girl, taken all our guns and supplies, taken my knife. For six hours, I stumbled after them, following their massive footprints like my life depended on it. My life did depend on it. Even with the sun passed noon, it was fucking hot, and I licked at whatever sweat formed on my hands or forehead to keep the inside of my mouth from cracking. It hurt to swallow, and my tongue was stuck to the top of my mouth.

Dammit.

When I wasn't staring at those footprints, I was staring at my Pip-Boy. Funny, I had gotten used to it just hanging off of my arm like a cancerous growth, just like the Overseer had said. While it came with a map- a surprisingly detailed one, with color and elevation and all that- it didn't help me at all. It was nice knowing that there was a hundred-foot-deep canyon about ten miles to the north if I ever felt like putting myself out of my misery, but it didn't show settlements or recent human activity or anything like that. Oh, I could tune into Galaxy News Radio- news, yeah right- or the Enclave's wonderful propaganda service, but having a radio station blaring across the wastes was a great way to call attention to yourself.

Everything felt heavy. I looked myself over, looking for anything I could get rid of, but nope- the shadow raiders had taken everything. In a fit of stupidity I chucked my combat helmet away and watched it roll down a hill into a rocky ravine. I then noticed that it was a whole lot hotter with the sun right on my head.

With a sigh, I scrambled down to get it, my leg spasming in protest the entire time.

Shit. The girl. I would always see her face whenever a splotch of red showed up along the footprints. The bastards, the bastards. Fucking bastard cannibals. Had Jericho been a cannibal? I didn't want to believe it, but too easily I could see him hunched over a fellow raider's corpse, digging into the organs without a care in the world. Shit. His teeth always did have a red tint to them.

I kept walking, combat helmet securely on my head. My beard itched like hell, and I could feel the mutant fleas moving around in there. I wished I had a bobby pin to scratch them out. When you used your fingers to try and scratch them out, they'd bite, and mutant flea bites get infected so fast you barely have time to amputate. Dammit my shoulder itched. I picked at the stitches through the duster, but that only made my shoulder lock up with pain. So itchiness or pain. I settled for itchiness.

So damn tired. At least the footprints were there, and I knew I was going west. What was west, though? Had to be better than this, or those raiders wouldn't be going there. I hoped so, anyway. I was hoping for a lot just about then.

I had to hunch over to push away the hunger pains. I tried eating dirt, chewing on irradiated grass, but that would only make the pain become repetitive stabs as opposed to a knife twisting in my belly. Oh, what I would've done for... anything remotely edible. I mean, aside from other people. No way, no cannibalism for me. No way.

After a while I sort of gave up. Not on living, but on finding anything, or getting anywhere. My eyes blurred and saw nothing. My breathing grew more ragged. What's the point of going on? I wasn't going to find anything.

A few bloatflies flicked past. I tried to go towards them, hoping that the venom in their stingers would wake me up a little, but just like that, they were gone over the next hill. Damn.

I stopped for a second, looked around. Maybe if I found one of those mutated scorpions, what did they call them- radical stingmachines? Something idiotic like that, I didn't know- I could drink its venom, eat its insides. That would keep me going! And they usually were around at this time! So in that half-insane stupor, I wandered around, looking into cracks in cliffsides and down holes for a mutated scorpion. Dehydration does things to you.

A little ways away, cave was nearby, stuck in the nearby hillside like a forgotten hiding place. Perfect, I thought to myself. I made a running start towards it- and tripping on a rock, tumbling down a long hill,  
hitting my head a few times, getting spun around so much I had no idea which way was up.

I didn't remember rolling to a stop. I was on my back, staring at a dark blue and purple sky with dusty clouds scuttling past. The clouds were tinted with orange and pink.

We didn't have clouds in the vault. I guess... this is a nice change.

I got to my feet, vomited dirt and grass, fell to my knees in pain, vomited again, and realized I had no trail of footprints to follow.

Okay, that was it. That was the breaking point. Watching someone die, getting held up and mugged, and getting left to die in the middle of fucking nowhere in not bad day material. It's way beyond that. It's who-the-fuck-would-live-this-day-out material. Shit.

So I just walked. Just plain walked. East, west, north, south, I didn't know or really care. I just hoped there was something nearby that could kill me. Fast, slow, painfully, painlessly, I didn't care.

My heart was beating like crazy and I felt like I could throw up again any second. Jericho said something about this- when you're on your last legs, when your body has eaten most of its own fat to stay alive,  
some gland dumps all the adrenaline you've got into your blood to keep you going. A few minutes, a few hours. Enough time to die.

It was just a blur from that point onward, of more dirt and sand and rock and brittle brown grass that crackled when you walked on it and poked your hands if you touched it. Tumbleweeds would roll past me and I'd think that's me, I'm just a dried out shell rolling along for no good reason all I have to do is follow the wind and the other tumbleweeds and everything will be okay and maybe we'll get snagged on some rocks but that's okay because the wind will show up and free us because the wind would never abandon us never abandon us just like dear old Dad-

Yelling. Meaningless yelling.

I wonder what's going on, who's yelling, and why. I then realize it's me. I'm yelling, I'm screaming my head off. What, was I doing my death rattle early to save time?

No... wait._ I'm_ yelling at someone. Someone in the distance. They're coming towards me. They're yelling too, but I can't hear or maybe I can it makes no sense to me. Or maybe its just the echo of my own hollering.

They're only across the next hill. I'm so happy, I could jump for joy if my malnourished legs didn't resemble those of someone with polio. I stumble forward with a grin on my face as this wonderful stranger comes to meet me-

And I feel cold, choking metal snap around my neck.

Like I said. There are bad days, and there are... bad days.


	6. Far Away, Its Someone's Lucky Day

_I kept scrubbing. The cloth was dirty and gritty and chafed away at my fingers but dammit the blood wouldn't come out. It was just stuck under my fingernails and stayed there, like it had finally come home after a long journey through someone else's veins. Light was bad, flickering and swinging back and forth, mirror all cracked. Sweat was dripping into my eyes, stinging, stinging-_

_Why wouldn't it come out? Smelled sweet and dry, like rust. Wasn't my blood, wasn't me. Wasn't part of me. So why did it stay? Wrong, wrong, the fucking blood was all wrong-_

_The door swung open, squealing on rusted hinges. I jumped back, tucking my hands close under my arm pits. I squinted into the light, breathing heavily._

_"Kid."_

_I gritted my teeth._

_"Kid," he said again, closest thing to concern that had ever touched his voice, "just... let it go."_

_But the blood wouldn't let go, why should I?_

_

* * *

_

His name was Sparky.

Not Bloodhound, or Red Reaver, or anything even close to that. The son of a bitch who had slapped that collar around my neck...

His name was fucking Sparky.

And that's all I heard the entire fucking way to the slavers' camp. That he had finally caught one, hot damn. Without even using a mesmawhatever. Without raising a damn finger. So this assclown drags me along after him, and really, all I could do was follow. I was dying of dehydration, my stomach was full of dirt to keep me from passing out altogether, my eyes were so sunstrained once it was dusk I couldn't see a thing. But Sparky didn't mind, no, slaver Sparky the great hunter was too overjoyed to tell me to speed up or stop tripping over everything in my path.

I don't know how long we walked. Time didn't make sense to me anymore. The only thing I really remembered was the feel of the inside of my mouth. Felt like the inside of a dry, hollowed out ribcage. Was so dry I couldn't move my tongue or even feel the scurvy for as much as it hurt.

I fell down a few times. Sparky would always help me get up, sometimes half-carrying half dragging me along. He stopped being so overjoyed once he noticed that, huh- I was almost dead.

By the next morning, at any rate, we finally came to what Sparky called home. If you're insane enough to call someplace in the wastes can be called home, anyway. A had-been strip small, fortified with a wall of cars, scrap metal, random pieces of buildings, debris, sand bags- you name it. An ordinary junk fortress. At the sheet metal gate was a single desk, a guy sitting behind it cleaning a rifle obsessively. I was so out of it I couldn't even tell what model of rifle it was.

Sparky yelled something to the guard, and without looking up, the guard pulled a chain hanging from a pulley. A whole lot of grinding and whirring and machinery moving around later, the gate was open and Sparky dragged me into the camp. Great. Just fucking great.

Where do I start? You get a cage. Rusted chain link fence, frosted with razor and barbed wire.. Five square feet of sand. Not even a rusty bucket to shit in (because, I guess, one might try to drown themselves in it to escape their fate), but I hadn't eaten anything but dirt so that wasn't a problem. Oh, but I was lucky. See, most of the cages had three or four unlucky souls crammed in them already, but me- I got my very own. I didn't know whether that was good or bad. I didn't really care. All I did was sit in that fucking square and stare at the clouds and bake in the sun. I didn't even want to die. By that point I was gone, I was back in Vault 101, playing baseball with Butch and Amata or capping radroaches with Jonas or talking about anything with my dad, dear old Dad.

My gear? I don't know. They took all of it. My knife was already gone so I didn't care. It was too hot for clothes anyway. At night I wished I had them though.

Fuck the collar was itchy. There was blood and rust and pieces of dry skin in it and it would scrape against my Adam's apple all wrong. I could hear the circuits in it, just waiting to blow up. I thought Jericho had been kidding about exploding slave collars. That is, until he broke some raider's legs with a piece of lead piping, snapped a collar on him, and detonated the poor bastard's skull to clear it up for me. I don't think I ever got over that. You don't get over stuff like that. The eyes rolled around for a while.

Sometimes I got food. Or whatever got chucked at my cage and went through the chain link. Already chewed gum, a bit of gristle or skin off a Brahmin, glowing mushrooms that made me see painful colors and vomit dirt (they laughed when I did. I stopped eating those.), any random unwanted crap you could think of. But it was a battle to chew, to force my body to digest. Sometimes I'd stop breathing and have to squeeze my eyes shut and mentally scream at my lungs to give a damn.

That son of a bitch Sparky dropped the most food. Maybe because he was proud. The other slavers couldn't stop slapping him on the back or spitting in his face less than usual. He wore less armor and leather than the rest, so I guessed that he was the new guy. Couldn't have had more than seven years on me. I didn't hate him. Hell, I could barely acknowledge him.

The other captured wasters were in far worse shape than me. They didn't have clothes, their ribs were poking through, their muscles had decayed and bellies bulged because their abdominal muscles couldn't hold the organs in anymore. I think some were dead. One kept trying to talk to me, though. I couldn't her him. Or her. I just heard a loud, distant ringing. Maybe I had some sun in my ears. I'd clean them out once I found a bobby pin.

The other slavers didn't acknowledge me and I preferred it that way. They just sat around and smoked and ate and popped chems and squabbled, maybe knocking some teeth out or breaking a nose or some fingers. They all seemed on edge, like at any second they might feel a collar of their own being snapped on. They never stood with their backs to one another, and always had one hand on their weapon. Pistol, rifle, knife, whatever they could carry. Sometimes they'd drag out one of the female slaves and try to rape her but she'd just lay there and they'd get angry and hit her and each other but use her anyway until she bled and throw her back in her cage and she'd just sit there. I felt the same way, inside my head.

I didn't sleep. I just laid, sat, whatever- in complete stillness, maybe moving to breathe now and again. And eat. Sparky would bang on the chainlink, ask me if I was going to make it through the day. His mouth moved, his brown worn-down teeth clacked, but I couldn't hear him. Maybe he was too far away. I tried to scratch my neck to get at the mutant fleas but my fingernails would just scrape at the collar and get splinters of scrap metal stuck in them.

They started to give me water. When the small bottle came through the fencing, I looked at it for a while. When was the last time I had drank? A week? A month? Was that how long I had been roasting in there? Time didn't make sense to me anymore. There was just bake and freeze, bake and freeze, shake and bake and freeze when Sparky banged on the chainlink. Bastard.

They took me out. I barely noticed. They dragged me out of that cage, a bit of my soul snagging on the barbed wire. They put me in a room with a table and pulled out the stitches in my shoulder and holy shit blood and pus was everywhere. So the had this- not a doctor, a... field medic... I guess... clean it out with bleach and detergent. Hurt so bad I could almost feel again. They stitched it up too, and when they threw me back in my cage I couldn't move my left arm for a day. I thought they had broke it.

My leg didn't hurt. I didn't do much walking. My right ear hurt though. Ear-hole... thing. Bled sometimes, not much. Sand would get in it and itch and sting but I didn't mind. But I could feel, that was an improvement. I wanted my knife back, my hands felt hollow without it. Fingers kept twitching, feeling for the rough wire-wrapped handle.

They kept taking me out, taking me to that room. Might've been a clinic if it had been made to make people feel better. Pills, water, shots that made me numb and woke me up. I could feel pain again, but I still couldn't care. The medic smoked a lot, made my eyes water and made me cough. He laughed. I took his cigarette and ate it. I laughed. He was sad and punched me. I punched him back and the pain was sitting in my head telling me to kill him and I said okay why not-

But they dragged me back, the chems wore off, I dazed off. Hell, I was losing it. I had lost it. My mind was gone.

Until some other guy came up to my cage. Wasn't Sparky this time. Was a lot worse.

Cheetah-print suit, shiny black shoes, tons of gold and silver chains, so shiny I couldn't look at them. He wore a cheetah-print hat, dark sunglasses, and had a funny pointed beard. He was backed up by four girls wearing tight leather that showed more than it protected. He was smoking, looking down at me thoughtfully. He looked inhuman, so was so clean and hair all tidy.

"Zis iz yor luhcky dey," he said warmly. I had no idea where the fuck that accent came from. Or if that even was an accent- maybe it was some sort of speech disorder. Born without tonsils.

I didn't say anything.

"Von-hondrad caps. Von-hondrad!" the slaver master threw up his gloved hands. "You haf mad me a verhy reich mahn."

By that point, I had had enough food, water and chems to be slightly sane. So I did the sane thing and ignored him. His beard was oiled, that's how it stayed pointed. Slick with blood.

"You don vant talk? Zat is uhnderstondable," he said, clapping his hands, rings clinking together. His bodyguards moved around him and opened the gate, dragging me out onto the main of the slaver camp. Part of me jumped to life just then. An opportunity to leave. I could stretch my legs! Spread my arms out all the way! Take more than two steps!

My clothes were thrown at me, all the buttons and zippers ripped out. My boots didn't have laces, and they took my socks. Whatever, I didn't care. I had my crappy tattered rookie duster that had seen me through my every gunfight. That was something.

The slaver master saw me out to the gate, where he waved me off. "Hayf fun! Savf travals!" his leather-clad bodyguards stood behind him, unmoving. I wondered what happened to them.

I took a few wobbling steps back into the wasteland, looked up, and Sparky was waiting for me, a detonator in his hand. He grinned sheepishly.

Son of a bitch.


	7. Chambered

_"Question nine: you decide it would be... fun to play a prank on your father. You enter his private restroom when no one is looking and..."_

_I frowned. I didn't like where this was going._

_A. Loosen the bolts on some pipes. When the sink is turned on, the restroom will flood. B. Put a firecracker in the toilet. That'll be sure to cause some chaos.  
C. Break into the locked medicine cabinet and replace his high pressure medication with sugar pills.  
D. Manipulate the power wattage on his razor, so he'll get an electric shock the next time he shaves._

_... The hell? Okay, sure, they had talked about the GOAT exam being pretty weird as far as tests go, but... paternal sadism wasn't really what I was expecting._

_I leaned back in my chair, squinting up at the fluorescent striplights lining the ceiling. One of them was flickering slightly; I concentrated on it. Okay. Maybe this was a trick question. Maybe we weren't supposed to answer this one. Yeah... that must be it! But then again, Mr. Brotch had specifically instructed the class to answer all questions. Crap._

_Mr. Brotch looked at me questioningly and I quickly hunched back over my desk, pretending to look over the question more thoroughly. Shit. He could tell I was turning this one over too many times and was mentally marking me down as indecisive. Shit! The Overseer hated indecisiveness almost as much as he hated incompetence._

_I tapped the eraser side of my pencil against the paper of a few times, biting my lip. Okay, think. Flooding was a serious problem in a vault, since most of the rooms were small, and as it was the vault's purifier was in such bad shape we were rationing water like crazy. And of course water damage was very difficult to repair..._

_Amata's brow was furrowed in concentration as she carefully marked in the circles, always sure to never have any lead outside the lines. That was such a cute expression. Made me want to kiss her nose._

_Dammit, concentrate! Okay. Firecracker in the toilet is the obvious worst answer. The Overseer must've put that one in just for Butch. But then again... there would be no way to light the fuse of a firecracker in a toilet- it would be wet! So obviously the firecracker would be completely harmless. Dammit. Unless blowing up the toilet beforehand was supposed to be the prank, in which case it would be a pretty crappy prank._

_Amata was chewing on the end of her pencil, licking the lead before completely marking the circle. There was something distracting about the way she would-_

_I smacked my forehead. Behind me, Butch snickered at my agitation. The dull throb in my jaw had become a sharper stab, and for a second I wished I had dropped by Dad to get it set properly. But I guess I was trying my best to impress Amata. By looking like a diagonally-jawed idiot. Yeah._

_Dammit, dammit, enough fucking around! Answer number three was just plain bad, combining punishable activity and something actually damn dangerous. Then again, they didn't specify the kind of sugar pills, maybe they were harmless... no way. This was my Dad they were talking about here! The guy who raised me! I wasn't going to take chances with his health like that! Fucking Overseer, fucking test, fucking Amata distracting me... fucking Amata... dammit! Come on-_

_Answer four. A shock from shaving. Wait... shaving..._

_I scratched at my stubbled chin, a slow, painful smile coming to my face._

_Dad never shaved._

* * *

Son of a bitch.

Those four words played over and over in my head non-stop for the next ten miles. Even with all that food (if you'd call random crap food) in me, I was still stuck in a mindset of complete angst, rage, and apathy.  
I finally understood why some freed slaves would just stare at you blankly once you've unsnapped the collar; they've lost the understanding of what joy and freedom are. There's just nothing there to care about and caring about anything is too much of an effort.

But knowing what I could be mentally reduced to, I fought those negative impulses. The best I could, anyway. Instead of bottling all that anger inside myself, I directed it at the son of a bitch walking in front of me with that detonator dangling lazily from his fingers.

Sparky. That son of a bitch.

My legs weren't used to being used. I had walked back and forth in my cage a few times to wake up the muscles, but exhaustion kept me from making any real progress. So add a hot sun, a fucking long ways to walk, a scratchy steel collar snug around your throat ten sizes too small and a captor who you could probably kill without a second thought. Not a good combination. Especially with those redone stitches in my shoulder itching like fuck and my right leg still stiff from the bullet holes. At least that slaver medic had given me something for the swelling and stiffness.

But having the whole wide world right there made me feel slightly better. After that cage, seeing the cloudless sky and far-off cliffs and overpasses and cracked roads and platueas and random wreckage here and there made me feel almost alive again. Almost. The vibrations in the collar reminded me I was almost dead.

Fuck, I was pissed. That asshole slavemaster in his fancy suit had found a buyer. Isn't that nice- like I was a fucking gun to be traded off or some shit like that. Sparky was overjoyed by that- the guy he captured was bought! He had made a good investment! Well woop-de-fucking-do, you son of a bitch.

I don't know what kept me from just tackling him, swiping the detonator and beating Sparky to death with my boot or something. So what if he pushed that big red button? Did I really have anything to live for at this point? I was more lost than I had ever been, and even my Pipboy's map seemed to show me a different world that I knew-

"They almost cut that off," he said.

I stopped dead in my tracks. I slowly looked up from my wrist and into the face of one son of a bitch. Dirty hair, gritty green eyes set too far apart, a mouth that wouldn't fully close- like he was always in shock or something.

He smiled nervously. "Yeah, I, uh- had to beg a while for them not to. When they brought you in."

"What?" my voice was a growl like two cinder blocks being rubbed together.

The smile disappeared as he gestured at my Pipboy. "Couldn't get it off," he explained slowly, as though expecting me to lose it any second, "they thought it was... you know, valuable."

"How long have you been doing this?"

"Uh. You were the first-"

_"You think I don't know that,_ you shitfaced fuck? You think _I don't know that?_ How long have you worked with those slavers?"

The wind picked up, blowing sand and debris around us. I paused as my duster flicked about, unused to not feeling the weather directly on my skin.

Sparky had his hands at his sides like he didn't know what to do with them. "I don't..." He looked up at me, a sudden seriousness in his eyes that took me by surprise. "Two months. And- and eleven days."

My fingers were twitching. I wanted my knife so badly. So instead, I focused on the Skorpion SA vz. 82 at his hip. "Why?" I hissed, wondering how quick of a shot he was.

"To stay alive! They killed my-" he stopped, eyes squeezing shut for a second before pointing at me. "You- look at _you!_ You've killed people!" he shot back accusingly.

"You don't know that."

"I do! You have the look!"

"Shut up. You don't know anyth-"

"No! They all have that look, the same eyes- the slavers, the raiders, all of them! That's how I know! You have them too!" Sparky had taken some steps forward as we yelled at each other. He was in punching distance. Good.

But his words... I couldn't move. There was something in his voice I had never heard before out there, out in the wastes. Fear, yeah, heard that all the time, but fear mixed with... _disdain?_

I didn't say anything. I just glared at him. He just looked sick. Sick at himself, sick at everything around him, sick at me.

"If I let you go," he said weakly, "they'll kill me. I don't- I don't know how to disarm the collar. If the battery runs out, you'll die." He took a steadying breath. "So, I- all I can do is take you to your buyers."

Wait, buyers? More than one? "Who are they?" I asked in earnest. Finally, some information.

"I'm not sure. They just wanted someone who could handle a gun, so..." He shrugged. "We're almost there," he said. "I guess you'll see."

I sure didn't like the sound of that.

* * *

Only a few dusty miles more and we topped a steep rocky hill that gave us one hell of a view. I almost got sick looking at all that space, all that open sky.

Sparky pointed to what looked like a deserted town below. Okay, not even a town- just a few houses grouped together that used to be a neighborhood, surrounded by short walls of scrap metal, tires,  
stripped down cars. Even had a dry moat, even if it was pretty shallow. Looked like someone was preparing for war...

"There," he said simply, starting down the hill. I sighed and tiredly followed, almost tripping and tumbling to my death in the process.

I might as well say that I wasn't surprised to see the entire settlement's population- half-starved, ragged, and sparsely armed- gathered at the gate, guns trained on us. Once we got close enough, one of the settlers called out at us to stop and sent out a single man to do the buying.

So, this was the kind of bastard that bought slaves. I mean, yeah, Moriarty had bought Gob, but the story changed so much I wasn't even sure. But these settlers... looked like anyone else. Malnourished, holding their guns like they knew how to use them but really didn't want to, dull-eyed. Their leader wasn't doing much better, but the Colt M1911 in his holster was enough for me to pay attention. That, and the patchwork burlap sack over his shoulder...

"This it?" their leader asked. It? Like I was thing? "Yeah," Sparky replied stonily. "Pay up."  
The leader tossed the sack to Sparky's feet and a few caps rolled out. Sparky needed only to eye the bulge to know that it was an even hundred- pretty impressive. He picked up the sack, slung it over his shoulder, and handed the detonator to the leader.  
"All yours," Sparky stated, almost professionally.

The leader nodded, thought he looked a little uncertain. Sparky turned to go, but stopped and dug around in his pockets for a second. He pulled out a half-pack of gum and tossed it to me.

"You're still a son of a bitch."  
Sparky said something that sounded a lot like "yeah, you too," and walked away back up the hill, over it, and out of sight.

Someone grabbed the back of my collar. I automatically swatted the hand away, but instantly froze as his other hand held the detonator- my detonator- with the thumb over the button.  
The leader grinned, but it didn't reach his eyes. His teeth were yellow and chipped to almost nothing. "Hope you're up for a fight," he said. I slowly looked around the settlement- outpost- and felt a sinking feeling in my stomach.

... Well, shit. Dodge one bullet to walk into another.

* * *

Yeah, filler is boring.


	8. Guard Duty

_"Take it."_

_"Fuck off, kid."_

_"I said take it!"_

_There was enough booze in us to float the entire damn bar, and at this rate we'd be cutting each other to pieces soon enough. Jericho's eyes may have been totally glazed over, but they still held that_

_knife-point glint of danger that I had learned to be careful of._

_The rest of the saloon's customers were trying to pay us no attention, drowning their sorrows in drink or just staring into the cigarette smoke. Random fights between drunks wasn't exactly a rare_

_occurrence here. Even so, Gob had tried to calm us both down; Jericho almost flipped out at the poor ghoul as Moriarty watched from the doorway of his office, smoking and smirking._

_"You must think you's pretty fucking funny," Jericho snarled, his voice disturbingly clear for downing so much alcohol, "But guess what? No one's laughin'."_

_"Just take it, Jericho." I tried to keep my voice steady, but that warm scotch wasn't sitting too good in my stomach. I could feel it slishing and sloshing around. Man I had to piss badly._

_Jericho had a foot on the first step of the stairs before he turned back to look at me, teeth bared. "You's new here, kid, so I'll let cha' off all nice 'n easy: you watch out for yourself, and no one else. That's it._

_That's Megaton, that's the wasteland- that's the fuckin' world, dammit!" He spat._

_"Yeah?" I took a few wobbling steps forward, hands curled into fists. Lucy West almost stood up to try and do something before stopping and sitting back down again- well, it was nice of her to almost try._

_West had always been kind of nice to me- as far as nice in the wastes goes, anyway. "How the hell do you expect me to watch my guide die, huh? Tell me that!"_

_Jericho just looked at me like he wanted my brain all over his boots. At the top of the stairs, Nova leaned against the banister, arms crossed and looking very annoyed with me._

_"Alright, you know what? Fine. Fine. I can't change you." I flung the condom at Jericho's feet and pushed open the door to Moriarty's, meeting a frigid and dusty night. Sitting myself in an out-of-the-way_

_alley, I knocked my head back against the wall and stared into the black sky._

_Fuck. It had taken me the better part of a week digging through ruins to find it, and he didn't even care. Some guide._

* * *

"Take your pick, prick."

My hands felt numb. Not the cold kind of numb, more like the just-got-electrocuted kind of numb. What can I say? I was so excited I was nauseated.

Stretched before me was a wide wall of rack after rack of guns, and my eyes just wouldn't stay still. It wasn't exactly the most impressive armory out there- mostly bolt action rifles, crappy post-war surplus that had seen little to no maintenance- but it was still firepower.

Kind of funny, really. Just ten minutes ago I was standing face to face with my buyer, already hating the bastard, when suddenly I get a pop quiz:

"How many people you killed?" he had asked. He's tossing the detonator from hand to hand, looking at me intently. My eyes are glued to the big red button.

"Um."

"Um? I don't speak fucktard."

Scowling, I held out both hands. I didn't trust myself to speak.

"... You're shitting me. Less than ten?"

I nodded.

He groaned, running his hands through his sparse hair. "And their best fighter, too. Shit." He stopped juggling the detonator and squeezed it angrily instead, making the metal creak. I felt a heart attack coming on. "That's that. Slavers are slavers." He turned, starting back into the settlement-compound. I followed warily, looking around at the armed settlers that had come out to flank their leader. They sure didn't seem happy to see me. A good old fashioned wasteland reception.

I caught up to leader-guy, scoping out my new prison as I did so. Many seven or eight houses grouped together, most of them falling apart. Sheds of scrap metal were built up against them. The roofs of the outermost houses had been converted into watch towers. I've got to say, this kind of organization isn't something you always see. And when you do, it's usually the work of-

"Jim."

"What?"

"My name's Jim." Okay. Short, balding, dentally-fucked leader-guy is Jim. That's... good to know.

"Uh, okay. In that case, I'm-"

"A hundred caps."

"What?"

Jim doesn't turn around. That's fine, he walked slowly anyways. Short bastard. "A hundred caps. That's how much it took to buy you. That's fourteen months of fighting, trading, and saving like hell."

Well, shit. "That's really too bad; you got ripped off."

Jim spins around elbow first, catching me hard in the ribs just below my bad arm. Breath whistled through my teeth as I automatically grabbed onto his arm, twisted it painfully and drove my hand to his throat, pulling him in for a knee to the stomach-

Then he waves the detonator in my face. Fuck.

I let go of him, rubbing my side. Hunger pains didn't make fighting any easier. He shook out his arm, smiling his cracked teeth at me. "You can scrap. That's good. Can you shoot?"

"If it's you I'm killing, sure."

His smile widens. "That's good." He turns around and heads on towards one of the larger sheds.

I don't like this Jim guy already.

Right, so that's how we get to the armory. Musty, dusty, a few rays of light coming through the gaps in the sheet-metal roof. Sad to say that it was probably the best-constructed building there. So I'm scratching at the damn collar, looking the racks up and down, trying to ignore the other settlers in there staring me down, when I finally bother to ask-

"Why'd you buy me?"

"Pierre said you were the best."

"Who?"

Jim stares at me blankly. Buyer's regret. "Pierre. The creepy fuck who sold you."

Oh. The slavemaster, with the suit and shades and bodyguards. Of course. "Okay, fair enough. The best...?"

"Fighter, knifer, sharpshooter. He had to butter us up for a damn long time before we even considered blowing a hundred caps on your sorry ass." He flicked the detonator a few times. I flinched. "Red one

kills you, right?"

I didn't answer that question. "So, you want me to fight."

"Damn, and he's smart too."

"Fight... what, exactly?"

Jim groaned- I guess he was a groaning kind of guy- and stuffed the detonator into his back pocket. "If you couldn't tell, this is a pretty nice town. Raiders like to make nice things not so nice. So we shoot at raiders, they shoot back, we all have fun. We run out of bodies eventually. They keep finding new meat, we don't. We buy a... 'unrivaled marksman', as shitbreath Pierre puts it. To even the odds. Turns out those raiders and slavers are probably working together, figuring out how much we can spare. Raiders will come in, kill the men, rape and sell the women to Pierre. Following me, quick-draw?"

For a balding, unpleasant little waster, this Jim was actually pretty smart. Then again, the last thing I needed right now was a smart captor. "You figured that out pretty fast."

"I figured that out the second I saw you. Duster, thin as fuck, can hardly walk. We had been doing jack shit but hoping for a decent gunman at the least, not a scarecrow."

I grunted. Great. From rotting in a cage to fighting for some random assholes. Settlers? Bullshit. These were raiders with their backs against the wall. This was getting better and better.

So, just looking at that rack, I decided to make the best of things by helping myself to a M1 Garand. The sights were bent and warped and rusted, the wood tarnished, the stock unusually light, but all in all, it was a rifle. Jim nodded approvingly and set an ammo box on a nearby folding table.

"Enjoy."

"Yeah, sure." I dug around the ammo box, picking out as many .30-06 Springfield rounds as I could find. "You have any stripper clips?"

"Lost them all."

"Great." I pocketed a good twenty seven rounds- way more ammo than I was used to having for a single gun. The weight of the bullets felt good in my duster. One of the guys leaning against the wall glared at me as I tried to bend the sights back into their proper position. Yeah, nothing like fighting alongside friends.

Jim tossed me a round I had missed. "Usually, I'd have you shoot some soda bottles or something to see what you've got, but we can't spare the ammo." He glanced at my Pipboy but didn't say anything.

"Feel free to believe in me."

"Like hell."

* * *

Around nightfall I had gotten a pretty good feel of the place. A pretty good feel of a pretty bad place.

There were maybe seventeen or more people living here, not counting kids (maybe they weren't as extreme raiders as I thought), and all of them were in bad shape. I almost had to break a girl's leg to keep her from stealing my boots- I mean, shit, and Jim just looked on grinning. He wasn't kidding when he said it had taken them fourteen months to get all those caps- these 'settlers' looked like they forgot what food looked like. I almost felt bad for the bastards. Then some guy tried to grab my Pipboy and was pretty surprised when I drove the screen into his face. It took me a while to wipe the blood off.

I wasn't guarded. Okay, not in the usual sense: I had most of the outpost staring me down, waiting to see if I was the awesome sharpshooter that asshole Pierre claimed I was. I was pretty much free to go where I wanted. A weird feeling after the cage.

After scrapping a bit more and knocking loose some jackass's front teeth, I sat myself down in front of the armory, put my new M1 Garand across my lap, and waited. Not for sleep. Just for anything. Jim had said he really didn't know when the raiders would show again- hours, days, weeks, whatever- but he just said to stay on my toes. I could do that. Having a gun in my hands felt so good I was ready for anything.

Didn't feel as good as my knife, but nothing did.

They rationed their water pretty harshly too, but the small bottle I was offered by the end of the day looked like a fucking rainstorm to me. Even if they were raiders, they weren't complete assholes. Can't believe those words crossed my mind.

I shifted a bit and felt a bump in my pocket. I fished it out- that half pack of gum Sparky had given me. That son of a bitch. I was no better than he was, and I was no better than Jim or any of his ex-raider lackeys, but... I don't know. I couldn't forgive them.

A flicker in the shadows. I turned and shouldered my rifle, smiling for the first time in weeks. "Come on, I see you."

Half-starved and dull eyed, a boy no older than ten edged out of the shadows, his knuckles white as they gripped a crowbar. Kids these days.

I tossed the gum to him. He jumped back, immediately suspicious. "Relax. I can't chew gum." I pointed to my mouth. "No spit left."

Still watching me closely, the kid helped himself to a few pieces before sitting himself back into the shadows. Well, guess I did have a guard. Better than being alone, I guess.

The kid blew a bubble. It popped and I gave a start, the M1 Garand falling out of my lap. The kid burst out laughing.

I smiled too. I couldn't help it. For a second I thought I had died.


	9. Play Nice Now

_Part of it just seemed... impossible to imagine._

_In the dark, I carefully put in the series of slides and hit the switch, waiting for the fan to warm up. Once it did, I began flipping through the slides, looking at some for seconds, others for minutes._

_Everyone seemed happy. Smiling families of two and a half children would be going to drive-ins, the beach, bowling, baseball games. But that toothy expression was alien to me; in the vault... no one really saw an occasion for joy. I mean, sure, Dad would crack a small one whenever he talked about mom, and Butch would always get a smirky kind of sneer whenever he tried to scrap, and Jonas always smile in relief whenever a check-up turned up nothing, but still... the vault wasn't a happy place. The outside world being one of constant good times... sometimes I wondered about those slides._

_What if... they weren't telling the whole truth? Everyone couldn't be constantly happy, constantly at peace with each other. There was a war, after all._

_I leaned an elbow on the table holding the slide projector, working my creaking jaw. It would always get sore late at night for some reason._

_Next slide... Statue of Liberty._

_Next slide... Jefferson Memorial._

_Next slide... Lincoln Memorial._

_Next slide... Grand Canyon._

_Next slide... Niagara Falls._

_Next slide... Washington Monument._

_Next slide... Mount Rushmore. Grand, patriotic, awe-inspiring... and the sky. I just couldn't believe that either. I mean, where the hell was the ceiling? Was it really that far away? Now I knew there was something off about that..._

_But they wouldn't lie. Why would they?_

* * *

A boot to the head.

I fell over onto my side, blinking in the dirt a few times.

Another boot, this time to the ribs.

I coughed, grabbed at the M1 Garand in my lap, and slammed the stock against my attacker's leg, sending him to the ground. I clambered on top of him, reaching for my knife-

Oh, right. No more knife.

The second I realized that, I was staring down the muzzle of a Colt M1911. One hell of a wake up call.

Jim grinned up at me, his cracked yellow teeth clicking together weirdly. "Shit reflexes, and do I mean shit reflexes."

I rolled off of him, scratching at the collar. Jim holstered his Colt and stood up, dusting himself off. It was early morning- maybe six or seven or eight o'clock, I had forgotten how to tell time with the sun just right. Even so, everyone in the outpost was awake, either maintaining weapons or on watch or both. I got the feeling that this was usually how things were.

But just in case... "Any news?" I rasped, brushing the dirt out of my beard.

"Nope." For someone expecting a full-blown raid any minute, Jim sure looked calm. He walked off towards the main gate, leaving me alone to my thoughts.

It beat the cage, at least.

Then again, being in a cage kept a neat row of bars between you and the maniacs who chewed on bones for a living. Here, in this outpost- they called it the Trough, fittingly enough- I had to brush shoulders with the type of raider that Jericho had spent day after day ranting about. Cannibal, rapist, murderer, torturer, slaver, thief. Or more commonly, all of the fucking above.

And you don't get used to getting within five feet of a complete sadist without getting a little nervous. It just doesn't work like that. With a collar around your neck, to them you were just meat. Useful meat,  
if you could hold a gun and shoot it straight, but vulture pickings all the same.

I sighed, pushed myself into a sitting position, and put the M1 Garand back across my knees. I gripped the rifle tightly, so tightly my knuckles hurt, but it didn't help the growing feeling of dread that had been gnawing at me since Sparky left. Am I going to kill again? I didn't want to. I just- I just wanted to go back to the Vault, crawl into my bed and forget about all this. Part of me was angry for being so weak, but another part was too tired of this shithole wasteland to even care.

"Y'gonna die 'lready, meat?"

A shadow fell over me, and I glanced up to see a relatively new and unfriendly face.

"Y'know 'ow much booze we missed out on?" Hacksaw leaned over, glaring at me eye-to-eye. Her face was caked with dirt and grime and stale sweat, lips cracked, thinning sunburned hair hacked short, dark circles beneath her eyes from guard duty.  
Raider uniform if there every was one. "'Ol Wolfgang passed through 'ere with a fuckin' box of hard shit and we had to keep our caps for yer sorry ass."

As the only woman in the outpost, Hacksaw didn't exactly live a great life. Jim would keep the other men from roughing her up too badly, but aside from that, he'd force her to either fight back or take it lying down- a way to make her tougher, apparently. I began to hate Jim more and more. Of the raiders there, Hacksaw probably treated me the worst, but seeing as I was fed enough to stand on my own two feet her bitching at me wasn't much of a problem.

"You have no idea how sorry I am."

Her fingers tightened around the handle of the hacksaw hanging at her hip- how she got the name. She grabbed me by the collar roughly and turned my face up towards hers. "Don't fuck with me. Scratch that: fuck with anyone here and I'll be jugglin' yer balls for fun. Got me?" Angry spit caught me in the eye and I blinked it away.

"Sure," I said blandly. What else do you say to that kind of threat? How many can you keep in the air?

Hacksaw pushed me away, leaving me on my back before she walked away haughtily. Fuck. I had always thought Jericho was arrogant, but he was mild compared to the dick-waving that went on here.

So let's see, let me remember: there was Hacksaw, the main source of my abuse. Then we had Splitfinger, a weird asshole who had a collection of severed middle fingers he hung around his neck on a piece of human sinew. I tried counting the fingers, tried counting them four or five times- but I'd hit twenty, notice a finger a whole lot smaller than the rest, and feel too disgusted to continue. Splitfinger found that hilarious.

"See, this one? With the flat yellow nail?" he'd whisper excitedly, almost forgetting to breath. "He screamed fer'a long, long time. Wanna know why? Didn't cut this one off- pulled it. More... challenge."

Understandably, I didn't like having guard duty with him. I don't know what was worse; that he loved telling me the story behind each finger just to watch me twitch and wince, or that he remembered each and everyone one like they were his own. Sure didn't help that he'd chew on one whenever he got nervous or thought he saw something move in the distance. Creepy fuck.

Then there was Cutter, who, next to everyone else, was pretty normal. He didn't say much to me, or look at me, really. He mostly spent his time making Hacksaw's life miserable, slamming her up against a wall or over a table or just down in the dust whenever he felt like it. Took me too long to figure out he was Jim's second in command; funny story. I walk in on him raping Hacksaw, and what do you know, that heroism Jericho warned me about would bubble up and I'd pop that stupid bitch Cutter in the nose. All I got for that was a face full of splinters from Cutter's board full of nails and wad of spit from Hacksaw- so much for a reward. The warm and bitter feeling of hopelessness growing in my stomach got a whole lot worse that day.

Now and again I'd run into the two of them fucking somewhere in the outpost, and I'd just have to turn away. Turn away from Hacksaw's ashamed glare, turn away from Cutter grunting like a rabid dog. Turn away and squeeze my eyes shut _and what the fuck is wrong with this place is everyone insane but me._

Maybe. Jim had lost his marbles a long time ago, I knew that. From the way he'd be whistling merrily through the gap in his cracked teeth or egging on fights that would break out or watching Hacksaw stare at nothing as Cutter violated her- and he'd always wear that fucked-in-the-head smirk. Shit. These weren't people, they were animals. No, that's an insult to animals everywhere. Even those two-headed cow things had more sense and decency than these hopeless sacks of shit.

A lot of the time I'd do guard duty alone. It was the only time I could sleep peacefully- then again, sleep's the wrong word. It was more like a trance. Ever since that cage, sleep just seemed... too dangerous. Too vulnerable when you sleep.

I'd run into that kid from before now and again. He was pale, scrawny, almost unable to walk, but he did. He was maybe the only one in the crapsack outpost that didn't treat me like shit. Mainly because they treated him like shit too. Starved him, beat him, you name it. "Make him tough!" Jim would holler, and down went Cutter's board full of nails. Down went Hacksaw's saw. Down went the rest of those sons of bitches who don't deserve names. All of them.

Except Gutmash. Asshole punched me in the stomach as I was walking around the side of a shed one day. As I hunched over, struggling for breath, he stood there proudly and grinned his stupid rotted teeth.

"That's why they call me Gutmash!" he declared, pounding his chest. The sun shone on his balding head like a fuckin' eight-ball. That did it.

It took three raiders to drag me away from Gutmash, and Jim was cheering all the while. I wanted to reduce that fuck to a red smear on the ground. Less than that. I wanted to erase him from everything.

"Gettin' better, hundred," Jim said with that thin smile of his. Hundred. That was my name. How many caps I had costed them. Sons of bitches.

Maybe the cage was better. At least they'd leave me alone. Sure, water and food weren't as scarce, but the people I had to share it all with made it worse than hell.

I don't know how the boy did it. He and the rest of the kids didn't cry or whine or anything, just scamper out of the way whenever a raider came stomping through. God, to think in a few years they'd be the same. That was torture enough.

To keep my mind off of things I'd hang around the armory, running my fingers along the rifles and revolvers. Not exactly an impressive stock- mostly bolt action, weak caliber, bullets were corroded, stiff bolts, bent sights- but it sure beat the usual raider melee bullshit. Now and again I'd try to imagine what my Mosin-Nagant was doing. Probably killing innocent settlers. What a happy thought.

That thought was interrupted when Hacksaw burst into the armory and pinned me against the far wall before I could so much as mumble a "what?" I was about to push her away when I noticed her Smith and Wesson Model 10 pressed against my stomach. Huh, .38 Special was a popular round in the wastes. Funny thing to notice at a time like that.

I didn't say anything. She didn't either. I just stared at her, confused and nearly having a heart attack. That is, until she started tugging at the front of my pants, her nails scraping at my waist.

"Hey!" I snapped at her, automatically driving my left elbow across her face, at the same time swatting her revolver aside with my right hand. She fired, making me jump a good foot in the air, and I tackled her to the ground, wrestling the gun out of her hand with, surprisingly, not much trouble.

"What is your problem? What the fuck is your problem?" I screamed at her. I could barely think. I could only remember that little circle on my stomach where her gun's muzzle had been.

She just headbutted me in the nose, rolled out from under me, scooped up her Model 10 and left the armory as quickly as she came. As I clutched at my bleeding nose, all I could feel was a red, ugly anger coming to a slow boil in my chest.

_We are killing you._

* * *

Another night, another trance. Raider-in-training boy was keeping me company, not saying a word. He was looking healthier, at least. I'd been splitting my rations with him whenever Jim and the rest of his fuckhead minions weren't around. From what I understood, they didn't feed the kids at all, just expected them to scavenge and fight each other for the scraps. Jim, you sick fuck.

Funny thing. Jim didn't see himself as a raider anymore. He was 'washed up', whatever that meant. I guess that explained his name being so... normal. That was their sort of cult tradition here; the more fucked up you become, the more normal your name. So Cutter suddenly made a lot of sense.

It had been only eight days and I felt like I had been here way too long. The slave camp had felt like a little pause in my misadventures, but this felt like a waste. I was just sitting around, getting the crap kicked out of me by maniacs, waiting to die. Was this why Jericho retired? Was this what he was tired of?

Actually, it wasn't.

I found out later, when Jim's boot to my ribs woke me from another trance. It was midday.

"Time to shine, hundred."

It was going to be a bad day.


	10. Blue Sky New Sky, Take One

Deep breath. Not too deep, though. Don't want to choke on that boiling air.

"Like ya fuckin' _mean it_, kid!"

The nicked and notched bayonet swam through the dust to find me, but I had ducked and rolled away to the right just in time. But as I popped to my feet, trying to ignore the sore joints in my legs, all I got in return was a kick to the chest.

The air whistled from my lungs and I fell to ground. I arched my back, gritting my teeth as my ribcage seemed to crackle, and quickly tried to roll away again- but Jericho easily stomped on my chest, robbing me of whatever air I had.

I tried to yowl in pain, but all I could do was curl into a ball and bite down on the grip of my hunting knife to keep from breaking my teeth. Shit. I guess I should've been grateful that Jericho's training would leave me with bruises and cuts instead of missing fingers or ears, but shit, I was fighting for my life out here.

Jericho chewed on the stub of his cigarette, unimpressed. It had snuffed out a while ago, but he kept it stuck between his teeth out of habit. Bad habit, I kept reminding him. "Look, kid. When someone's less than a step away you can't just roll yer ass to safety. Why do you think people walk instead of roll places, huh? 'Cause we like being slow? Fuck no, use your head!"

The pain in my chest was beginning to fade and I could rake in a few gulps of hot, chafing dust. Tasted like shit. Everything tasted like shit out here. The water, the food, the air...

"'Nother thing! Why'd ya roll to the right? Yer right handed!"

I uncurled and rolled onto my stomach, stretching out my back and legs. Everything seemed to hurt, and the patch of sand right outside Megaton we used as our training space seemed a lot bigger than usual. I blinked a few times, wondering if I had hit my head.

"Situational... action..."

"Not them big-ass Vault words, kid. Sometimes you're gonna get cut, and sometimes there's jack shit you can do. If you had stayed standin', I might've grazed ya, but you still would've been on your feet!"

I took a long, tired breath, and my ribs creaked a I did. Damn it all... "Okay. Alright. Fine."

Jericho spat, stepped back, and began running his cracked and dirty fingernails along the edge of his AKS-74 bayonet. He seemed to be caressing his guns or knives whenever he wasn't using them, smoking, or drinking, I thought blandly as I carefully pulled himself to my feet, wiping the dust off my Vault-tec jumpsuit automatically.

"Leave it on, kid. Camo."

"What?"

_"Camouflage."_ He waved the jagged point of his bayonet at the surrounding wasteland. "See all that? Brown. See this?" he pointed to his grimy, dirt-caked face. "Brown. I'm fuckin' invisible. You, blue-bomber, sure ain't."

He had a point, I hated to admit. You don't spend your entire life being toted as the prodigy of your class to be scolded at for a lack of common sense and take it well. I took it badly, actually. "Fine. Fuck." I tightened the grip on my hunting knife. Thing seemed to get heavier every damn time I picked it up. "Again. Let's go."

Jericho grinned, a crooked and ugly crack in the earth. "Keep diggin' that grave, kid."

* * *

I stared. It was hard not to.

Okay, it was a little hard with Jericho blowing cigarette smoke in my face constantly and Billy Creel trying to start up a friendly chat, but out of the corner of my eye I could still watch Gob in amazement.

It was really something. You might not think so, but... it's like those slides they show of muscles and organs and bones and stuff, and how you have to imagine it all working together seamlessly. With these... I hate the word... _'ghouls'_, you can see it all happening. The muscles and ligaments of Gob's jaw tightening whenever Moriarty passed by, or how the tendons below his eyes would soften whenever he glanced at Nova. More interesting than any science lesson I had ever sat through in the Vault, I can tell you that!

And when he talked! Jesus Christ! You could see his voice box vibrate and everything! Back in the Vault they said nothing about what would happen if you didn't make it to shelter- just that you 'missed out'. On life, I guess. But seeing these... _ghouls,_ made it seem so different. Being able to survive so much fallout... it's like we didn't need the Vaults. It's like human progress would go on no matter what...

"You want something, bud?"

I jumped. Gob met gazes with me, and I stared at those cloudy yellow eyes in morbid curiosity. "Uh... what's he's having..." I said slowly and politely, pointing my thumb over at Jericho.

I regretted that the next morning. Creel thought it was hilarious. Asshole.

* * *

_I didn't remember much. Just a few faces floating over me against a blue sky. Sherriff Simms, and Doc Church, those two I remember. Simms telling me to stay awake, keep my eyes open. Doc just looked annoyed. Business as usual for him. It all began to fade once something sharp was stabbed into my middle, and a creeping cold numbness began to spread all through my body. At that point, all I could notice was Jericho looked worried and red all over everyone. My red. Jericho never worried._

* * *

"So... underground, huh?"

"Yeah." I watched closely as Jericho ran a finger along the rim of hid chipped and scratched glass, scotch untouched. "You just live here?"

He looked up at me oddly. "Yeah. There's nowhere else to live. Why?"

I shrugged. "Just... I don't know. Seems like there's nothing here."

"There's nothing anywhere, kid. Wasteland, remember?"

I soon figured out- without much trouble- that it took a lot to faze Jericho.

* * *

No one likes flashbacks, but that's that. Sorry about the long wait. Actual story will progress now.


	11. Bite the Hand that Pulls the Trigger

_"God have mercy on us all. You're slated to be the Vault's new administrator."_

_I blinked. All I did was choose the nicest answers for all the questions... why was our Overseer such a bastard, then?_

* * *

What a way to start the day. Squinting up through the dust at Jim, his balding head lit up by the sun right behind him like the most dickheaded angel you'd ever meet. But something was different- something that made the dread in my stomach hit the boiling point. He usually waltzed around the Trough with his shirt off, not paying any mind to the dead skin he shedded everywhere. But today he was wearing a leather vest, all sewn over with pieces of scrap metal like a flak jacket.

"What-?" I propped up my M1 Garand like a cane to support myself as I pushed myself to my feet, wobbling a little on my right leg. I leaned back against the sheet metal wall of the armory, and looked a bit closer at Jim.

His Colt M1911 was held loosely in his fingers, the hammer clicking up and down as his thumb played with it. He usually was kind of twitchy like this... but today, I could see the excitement bubbling right underneath his sunburned skin. "Splitfinger's spotted kick-up to the east. Comin' in hot. Gonna be good. Gonna be good!" he was practically bouncing up and down on his toes.

I gulped, my throat dry. Jim had always creeped me out before, but the way that yellow-toothed grin never left his face was something out of a fucking nightmare. "Okay. Okay. How- how long?"

"Fuck knows! Can't wait!" and like that he just skipped off to the eastern bank of the outpost, where- now as I looked- more of the raiders were readying themselves. Whistlethroat, Shankteeth, Hoofhead- I put names to as many raiders as I could, angry at myself that I even tried to remember. But for every raider I could name two or three more came along, sharpening their knives, loading their guns, looking more sadistic than usual.

For a minute, I just stood there, not sure what to do. I had never been in a real firefight before. I mean, I had skirmished some two-bit badlanders before, but Jericho and I had always been the one to spring the ambush, or have some sort of trap set up. This... this was different. I just felt like an oversized target, bonus points for the shiny thing stuck around my neck.

God, I had no one. For the first time since I stumbled out of the Vault, blinded by the sun and confused by the wind, I had no one to go back-to-back with in a fight.

So I just stood there, scared and not really sure what to do. Get up front, with the sandbags and stacked cars and sheet metal barriers and all that? Nah, I'd get shot at first. The guard towers? No, not enough cover. Sit in the armory and wait to die? That sounded like a good idea. The best damn idea I'd had ever since I decided to tag along after dear old Dad.

I turned, walked around the outside of the armory, and took a single step inside the dark musty shed of a building. Then I stopped.

Clutching pistols and rifles unsteadily, a group of kids were huddled at the back corner of the armory. At the front, I recognized the boy who I split my rations with. He looked up from his MAS Mod le 36 long enough to notice me, and went back to cleaning out the chamber.

I felt sick. Sicker than usual. I walked forward unsteadily, stopping before the boy and dropping to my good knee. "Kid," I whispered.

He looked up again. His eyes were oddly blank.

"You're... gonna fight?"

He nodded and wordlessly went back to his rifle, his nails red with rust, his fingers pinched from the bolt mechanism. But he kept at it, as did the rest of the kids.

Something hot was behind my eyes, and I squeezed them shut. Why... how... I couldn't even put words to it anymore. Jim, the sickest son of a bitch I had ever met, all of these worthless bastards, and these kids, damned to join their ranks-

I couldn't take it. I clamped my mouth shut, stumbled out of the armory, and maybe made it ten feet before I hit the dirt and starting throwing up. I came up dry, with a bit of mashed up grass- rations were tight the past few days, maybe some water here and there- but my throat muscles were still spasming, my stomach clenching painfully.

Fuck this wasteland. Fuck this world. How could people have made such a place? There was _nothing nothing nothing in the slides about this everyone was smiling and happy and strong and nothing bad ever happened-_

A shadow came over me, and I weakly looked up from the ground to see Cutter. There wasn't a hint of cruelty or spite in his face- there wasn't anything at all. It was all in his eyes. It was like looking into a sewer and knowing stuff was down there but not sure how far and what it really was

He walked away towards the front line, his board full of nails resting on his shoulder. The crazy fuck didn't even have a gun.

Okay. Okay. I pushed myself back onto my ass and stared up at the sky, pulling my threadbare duster around me tight. If there was anything to be positive about, I thought dimly, it was that all of this insane bullshit still bothered me. The second I started taking it for what it is- I'd be a goner, be no better than the empty-eyed fucks I was employed by.

A warm breeze picked up- making the already hot day even shittier- and I made my way up to the front gates of the Trough. I gave everything a pretty thorough look- the moat surrounding the outpost, filled with sharpened stakes, the barbed-razor wire that seemed to cover everything like rusty cobwebs, the patched up sandbags, the piles of scrap metal serving as cover. I glanced back over my shoulder, wondering how the other side of the camp was fortified compared to this, and realized that the entire fucking outpost was watching me.

I turned around awkwardly and met their stare. I guess I should've expected this... I was their trump card. They had starved for months to buy the collar around my neck, and they wanted to see if the guy stuck in it was worth their pain.

Jim, I noticed, was out of the outpost completely, testing the points of the stakes in the moat. His hands were bleeding, but he didn't notice or liked the color.

I jogged- limped, anyway- over to him, feeling everyone's eyes lasering into my back. Nothing like being the center of attention. "Uh... Jim."

"Huh." He wiped his hands off on his camouflage pants, only to go right back to testing the points.

"Look. Um... they, uh... gonna flank?"

"What?"

"What if they flank?" I said again, working my mouth. Fuck, talking was harder than anything else out here.

"Ugh. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah." Jim waved a bloody hand towards the flanks of the outpost. "Mines."

My stomach tightened automatically. "Wha... what?"

"Mines. You know, they eat legs and shit shrapnel."

I nodded weakly. "And... the back... ?"

"Even more mines. It's like a mine orgy all around us. Kept the front all tidy, though. Want to keep the way open for visitors!" he clapped his hands together, satisfied with the sharpness of the moat's bottom. "Yeah, so... make yourself useful. Splitfinger said they're pretty much here."

I felt the blood leave my face. Jim shouldered past me and walked through the sheet iron gate, through the crowd of raiders watching us.

"Okay," I mumbled to myself. "Okay." I guess running is for it wouldn't work either. Fuck, did it have to be land mines? The stabbing moat I could deal with, but Christ I can't look at a mine anymore without feeling my organs slosh.

Turning around on my heel, I jogged back to the front line. There was a nice spot- nicer than the rest, anyway- of some sandbags plated with metal. Wasn't really any better than the rest of the cover, but I sat myself down, moved around so I didn't have a rock up my ass, put my M1 Garand across my knees, and waited. The .30-06 Springfield rounds in my duster pocket were a comforting weight against my side. The only comfort I had. That I could die putting up a fight.

"That's my spot."

I opened my eyes to see Hacksaw glaring down at me. One of her hands was on the Smith and Wesson Model 10 at her waist, the other on the handle of her namesake hacksaw. This close, I could see that it was actually pretty blunt. And it has stuff stuck in the teeth... stuff that looked like bone fragments and hair. Oh, God. I looked back to her eyes. She wasn't as totally insane as Cutter, so at least I didn't get the chills from her. I mean, shit, Hacksaw almost made me feel brave.

"Then sit down, babe," I purred (not) smoothly, setting aside the M1 Garand and patting my lap. Her face twisted into a snarl as the raiders still sticking around to watch me gave a few barking chuckles. I was probably about to get brained then and there before Jim showed up, all smiles.

"What? Joining us here? Fucking good. Now I can really watch you tear shit up, hundred," said Jim cheerfully, plopping down next to me and peering eastward over the sandbags. "Ha! Good timing!"

Almost immediately the raiders scattered, melting into cover like they were the scrap and sandbags themselves. Hacksaw dove down next to me, all anger forgotten (or put away for later, whatever). I just sat there, eyes wide, not sure what was coming to the gate. I... didn't want to look and see.

Splitfinger sprinted past us and through the gate, almost giving me a heart attack. "At the rock!" he chirped as he slid into cover, his necklace of fingers seeming to scratch at his throat with the movement.

The... rock. A marker of sorts, I guess, because everyone around me tensed up, veins popping out green and purple as they gripped their rifles, red dots on their skin from where they shot up their chems- except for Jim. He just pulled out another two magazine for his M1911 and laid them on the ground, calm as could be.

From where I was sitting, I noticed a few wisps of dust beginning to float over us. Then, almost too quickly to be real, a wave of dust came down on us, cloaking everything in brown, blocking out the sun, turning the outpost into an unbearable oven. Wind was going west, pushing up all the kicked-up dirt from the incoming raiders.

That rock couldn't have been far away, but it felt like I would die of old age (merciful alternative, really) before anything happened. For some odd reason, I glanced at my Pip-Boy. Felt like I hadn't noticed the thing in days... with good reason. Screen as cracked, dust had gotten in it, map was useless. The only thing it was good for now was the clock, when the light hit the screen just right and made the numbers legible.

It was 2:16. Crazy, huh?

Jim popped out of cover with what I could only guess what his raider battle cry: "FUCK Y'ALL!" And his pistol said the rest.

At his call, the raiders of the Trough let loose with their guns, and you could say the shit hit the fan.

I peeked over the sandbags, wondering what their- my enemies looked like. But the dust was still thick- the hill to the east of the outpost just seemed to be crawling with shadows. A few would stumble and roll the rest of the way and not get up- that'd get a cheer from the raiders.

But after five or six or seven or however many of these invaders fell, and as I began to idiotically hope I could just sit here and let Jim and Hacksaw do all the shooting for me- I looked over the sandbags one more time, and stared.

They broke out of the wave of dust, seeming to carry their own wind. Sand and dirt blew all around them, bullets flew past, spurted up dirt and rock from the ground- but they headed on. Even from my distance, I could see their armor- heavily boiled leather, plated with beaten steel, all of it dyed black.

All black, except for the four-finger claw carved into each breastplate.

**"TALON COMPANY!"** one screamed, followed by another, and another. They came with the dust, sprinting across open ground, not once looking back if one of their own were downed. The shots from their Colt M16A2's were short, controlled, completely unlike the wild fire of the Trough raiders. Some wore helmets, metal masks shaped into horrible nightmarish faces, or just black cowls flapping in the wind.

Jericho had told me about them. As I sat there, cowering behind those sandbags and trying to block out the battle cries and the ringing gunshots, all I could remember was Jericho ranting on and on about how only the sickest of the sickest fucks were recruited into Talon Company, the meanest mercs around. Jericho had been approached, once, he had said to me pridefully. And had the many scars to prove it; they didn't take no for an answer.

So there went all of my confidence. A good shot? Sure. But there's a line you don't cross if you want to live, and by God I was holding onto it with my fingernails now.

But if I didn't fight, I'd have to answer to Jim and his minions, so either way... a .45 ACP shell casing hit the ground, completing the thought for me.

I crept up, jostling Hacksaw (who barely noticed me) just enough to get the muzzle over the rim of the bags, and scanned the field. There were a lot less dead on the ground than I hoped, and a hell of a lot more mercs than I had imagined. From the way bullets were raining on us, they must've been staying back, giving us steady waves, trying to feel us out.

I peered down the sight, absently thinking to myself that despite it being warped and rusted, still worked pretty well. I carefully guessed the distance, the speed, and drew a bead on a Talon merc moving up a bit slower than the others, taking more accurate shots. Three hundred feet... I could just get him in the ear, under the helmet...

Another merc, out of his mind, came bearing for the gate at full speed, spraying rounds as he roared. Most few overhead, but some skirted the bags and one caught some raider to my right in the throat. He dropped his rifle, stumbled back and rolled around in the dust, clutching his throat as if hoping to strangle himself before he bled out. He bumped up next to me, a pitiful whine whistling through the hole in his neck.

I swung the M1 Garand to the left and placed a bullet through the head of the sprinter, who tumbled and rolled through the dirt and sand for a good ten feet. The raider at my side didn't see it, but I leaned over him and said quietly in his ear-

"Got him."

The raider looked at me with glazing eyes, understanding. I turned back to the fight, not wanting to watch him die.

So, I could kill. All I felt was the stock bump my shoulder. No regret, no anger, so nausea- okay, maybe a little nausea- but not much else. Guess I still had what it took.

Jim patted me on the shoulder as I took aim again. I felt even more nauseated.

We had cover, but they had numbers, better aim, and better armor. I shot a merc twice in the chest before I realized that their plating wasn't there for show, and I took aim for the legs, blowing out his knee in two tries.

I flinched whenever a bullet, stray or not, landed too close, sometimes ducking back fully into cover. I glanced at Hacksaw, expecting her to be scowling at me in disdain- but she was doing the same, sliding .38 Special rounds into her revolver's cylinder with shaking fingers. God, she couldn't have been much older than me.

A comparatively loud roar of "TALON COMPANY!" boomed from the dust again, and another wave stormed out to meet us. I don't know how many they had lost- maybe thirty or more were on the ground, but most were still moving, some even still shooting prone. Whenever I took cover, it seemed more and more of ours would be dead or dying. I think Splitfinger was one of the first to go, a ricocheting bullet going through his hand, an aimed one going through his chest when he struggled to steady his MAT-49. Gutmash was a bit ahead of us, a bullet-ridden sack of meat at the edge of the field. He had tried to sneak into the moat, shoot at the mercs' feet or something. I didn't see Cutter. I did see a lot more bodies I didn't know, though.

I smiled- half of my face did, anyway- as I took up my position again and fired at a merc aiming his Remington M24 a bit too well for my comfort, catching him below the shoulder and through the upper chest. It was nice to know that these bastard raiders would be dead at the end of the day. I would be too, but it seemed like a decent price to pay at the time. I mean, shit, I would've gone and fought with the Talon mercs if Jim didn't have the detonator to my collar.

The rusting pieces in my head finally clicked as one of my bullets harmlessly went by another sprinter's head. Jim... had my detonator...

I glanced back again, handloading some rounds into my rifle as I did.. The Trough raiders were getting gunned down left and right, leaving maybe half of their band left. The mercs were picking up the pace, the waves denser. They knew we were done for. They weren't even trying.

The raiders were all preoccupied with the onslaught. I patted Jim on the shoulder. He looked back at me absently.

"Jim?" I yelled over the gunfire.

"Yeah, hundred?"

"Fuck you." I raised the M1 Garand and fired, but Jim wasn't stupid. He swung his Colt M1911 around as I fired, his bullet cutting a path across my right cheek. But my bullet cut a path through his brain.

He fell back, and I laughed. Laughed. What a stupid way to die. Betrayed by someone who hated you in the first place. I underestimated him, but in the end- in the end-

Hacksaw dropped back into cover, looked at the picture, and raised her revolver- but this time I was ready, and the hole in her stomach sent her to the ground.

"Fucker!" I couldn't hear her, but I could read her lips. I noticed the syrettes on her belt, that morphine she guarded so closely, and helped myself, sticking them in a duster pocket. She kicked and choked on dust and pulled at the hand of her hacksaw, but I paid her no mind as I took Jim's M1911 and the spare mag. And the detonator, of course.

I fired a spray of blind fire with my rifle, and ducking low, sprinted my way back into the middle of camp, weaving between cover and dodging friendly fire. It wouldn't be friendly once they figured out what happened to Jim... but the raiders didn't give me a glance. Guess they thought I was heading to the armory.

Huh, wait...

I turned the corner around the shed that served as a mess hall and caught my breath, only to keep moving again. A few more long steps, and I was in front of the armory.

"Kid!" I yelled hoarsely.

My eyes adjusted to the darkness, and I realized I had a hell of a lot of guns pointed at me.

"Kid," I said again. The pale boy took a step forward, his rifle thankfully lowered.

"Look. The fight's fucked. No chance. Everyone's gonna die. Come on. We gotta run. We all gotta run!" I explained to them anxiously. But... they all just looked at me. The pale boy shook his head, and melted back into the darkness of the armory, the Trough's last line of defense.

"No! Dammit! Kid-"

A shot rang out, striking the wall right next to me. I turned and ran. Ran my ass off, fueled by nothing but bitterness as I climbed over the wall of cars and metal at the west of camp and carefully lowered myself into the spiky moat.

_He made his choice. Nothing you can do._

_He's gonna die._

_Nothing you can do._

I climbed out of the moat, covered in scratches and splinters, and ran west, hopping over the mines just like how gray-eyed girl taught me.

_All I can do now is run._


	12. Blue Sky New Sky, Take Two

I turned it over in my hands again and again. It was heavier than it looked, but it moved through the air with ease. I almost thought it would snag on all the dust in the air from how jagged the blade looked. But even with the scratches crisscrossing the flat and the edge nicked and notched, it lived up to its name.

"First Blood."

I glanced up at Jericho, who was watching me with curiosity. He almost seemed slightly put-off by how intrigued I was by the knife, but then again, he was always put-off by me. The vaultie. It was always easy to tell from the way he chewed on the stub of his cigarette, the way his eyes didn't reflect anything but stale hate.

"Killed more than I can count. Each scratch tells a story, kid. If you're lucky, you'll add a few." In a single smooth draw his old bayonet left its sheath, just an inch from my throat. I gulped, trying not to choke on the dust and cigarette smoke.

"So, I'd suggest you two-"

I hopped back, getting out of the bayonet's range. But as I did, Jericho moved forward and slammed his foot into the middle of my chest, sending me sprawling backwards into the catwalk railing. The rusty steel rail groaned under my weight, and I threw my arms out, groping the air for balance.

"-Get very, very cozy with each other," Jericho finished, walking forward with a lazy wide slash. I dodged to the left, making a spinning swipe at Jericho's leg, but he just lifted it and kicked me in the face, sending me the the sheet metal floor of the catwalk.

I didn't waste time feeling for a broken nose. I rolled right, avoiding Jericho's stomp, and rolled backward onto my feet. The catwalk in front of Jericho's house was flat, but not too wide-

Jericho lunged forward again, a lot faster than I expected- he had his fingers around my right wrist like iron and brought his bayonet in for a finishing stab. I drove my knee up into his locked elbow, making him grunt in pain, and twisted my torso to the side- enough to keep from being killed, but not enough to keep the bayonet from slicing deep into my jumpsuit and into my ribs.

I groaned and sank to the ground, fingers clutching my side. Jericho grabbed my hair and yanked my head upward, making me stare him in the face as his bayonet hugged my throat.

"You still don't get it. You don't stop, kid. Not until you're deader than fuck, you don't stop fighting."

I nodded weakly. Blood trickled down my neck, dripping down onto the knife.

* * *

"So... it plays the radio?"

I picked at the screen of my Pip-Boy 3000, trying to get the dirt from out of the cracks. I couldn't figure out how it got behind the screen... dammit, it'd probably never come out. The dials crackled with sand whenever I turned them, too...

"Not just that." I waved the hunk of plastic in front of Jericho's face. "Won't come off- it tracks my vital signs. Heartbeat, breathing, all that. And this-" I pressed a button and a map of the area came up- outdated, but still useful. The bombs had switched the landscape up a bit, making the elevations a bit inaccurate.

"Not bad, kid," Jericho muttered slowly, trying not to seem too interested. "It do anything else?"

"Yeah. If I piss off the Overseer, he can make it explode."

Jericho stared at me, mouth hanging open.

"... That was a joke."

* * *

I stared. And stared. And stared some more. I don't why, but... I couldn't look away.

It looked at me. I froze, awestruck, but it went back to chewing garbage as if I wasn't there.

Jenny Stahl watched from behind the bar counter of the Brass Lantern, waiting on a slow day. "Something wrong?"

"... The... the cow... "

She tossed her curls. She did that whenever she was bemused. "The what now?"

"It..." I crinkled my nose, squinted my eyes. Maybe the radiation was getting to me. "... It has two heads."

"Oh. The Brahmin. Yup." Stahl cleaned a few mugs with spit and a grimy brown scrap- I made a mental note to stick to Moriarty's.

I scratched my neck. Two heads? Two brains. That was hard to believe. But with two brains, there'd have to be two spines, but would they fuse together where the necks met or did they just go side-by-side down the back? Which one controlled the feet? Maybe they split the feet between the two...

"... How does that even work?"

"You'd have to cut it open."

The Brahmin turned its head- heads- to give me a cold glare. I decided against it.

* * *

The bubbles from the Nuka-Cola and whisky seemed to dance on my tongue, making it difficult to think. This was one of Jericho's odder training lessons.

"Billy Creel."

I breathed deeply, closing my eyes. Really? Creel? "He has a daughter-"

"It's a fuckin' life-or-death situation."

I frowned at Jericho as he gulped down his fifth vodka. He probably bled the stuff... "Okay," I mumbled, my voice slightly slurred. I leaned forward a bit- sitting on the bottom step of the stairs, we had a pretty good view of the saloon. "I guess... walk past his right side, and put a knife in him."

Jericho slammed his glass down on my fingers. "Wrong."

I jerked back my fingers, sloshing half my drink over myself. I shook out my right hand, grimacing. "What the hell do you-"

"Look."

I curled my fingers into a fist and watched. Nova walked her way across the busy saloon, looking for potential buyers. She eventually stopped at the end of the bar counter, leaning over to chat with Gob.

The entire time, Creel's head had been turning so slowly I had barely noticed. His entire body had moved, but just slightly- and his left eye was flicking left and right every time he took a drink. The only part of him that seemed to have kept still was his hand, resting on his leg. His left hand...

Jericho grunted in contempt. "Been missing that eye for years. See how he wears his holster on the left?" Now that I looked, Creel did. And that holster held a dangerously large revolver... "Trained himself to be left handed. You don't guard caravans without being a killer shot, and missing an eye- not a fuckin' joke, kid. You would'a been dead before you knew it."

I probably should've been disturbed that Jericho was using the residents of Megaton as examples on how to kill. But at the time, I was just in awe.

* * *

More flashbacks. Boring, but the little things count.


	13. That Radio, Even the Dead Can't Sleep

I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the waters of life freely.

_There wasn't a day that I didn't repeat that passage to myself ten times, sometimes more. Dad thought it was kind of counter-productive that I obsessed over that one line, completely without context, but I didn't really care. Those twenty seven words, those hundred and one letters, that one comma and two periods- they were the only tie I had to my mom. Shit, I couldn't even see her when I looked in the mirror- I just looked like a younger version of Dad, maybe a little taller._

_Amata sort of stuck to me because of that, I think. The whole no-mom thing. That, and probably because I was the only guy her age who wasn't a complete asshole._

I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the waters of life freely.

_Amata had a little pocket Bible she always carried around, a.. 'gift' from her father. As long as I can remember, she'd always had it on her, always mouthing out a passage or another, trying to think of the righteous and just thing to do for every situation. She was expecting to be the next Vault Overseer. Everyone expected her to be the next Vault Overseer. But I think she was guilty- even if she hid it damn well- of how harsh her father could be sometimes. She always did the right thing, even when she got nothing out of it. Something her father hated..._

_Something I admired._

I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the waters of life freely.

_Now and again, I'd peek over her shoulder and try to read a line or two. But none of it seemed to stick. None of it, really, but Revelations 21:6._

_Amata was horrified to learn that, obviously, and took to preaching as well as she could with that little Bible. She didn't have much success, though. I was still fighting with Butch as much as I always did and practicing with my BB gun whenever I could. But I tried my hardest, I really did. Just for her._

I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the waters of life freely.

_She had helped me escape. She had put it all on the line. All for me. I would always owe her my life. Always._

* * *

_"Him."_

_I blinked, wringing my grimy hands. "But... he has a kid-"_

_Jericho punched me in the side of the head- not roughly. If he hadn't been drunk, I'd probably have been knocked out. "Fuck. Jus' do it, kid."_

_From where we sat on the bottom step of the stairs, Jericho and I had a pretty good view of Moriarty's Saloon. Gob at the bar, Nova preening at her corner, Moriarty counting and double-counting caps back in his office. I recognized a few other faces in the dust and cigarette smoke- Lucy West, Sherriff Simms keeping the peace, some other settlers just passing through who I'd never see again- and my target._

_Sitting alone at a table, his right hand fiddling with his empty glass, he looked deep in thought. Nova perked up from her usual spot and walked slowly, with the usual cocked hips, across the saloon. His head followed those hips closely._

_Nova passed his table to put an elbow on the bar counter and chat with Gob, her ass put out almost expectantly._

_"Now."_

_"Yer dead." Jericho swirled his vodka with the butt of his cigarette, not seeming to mind that his rust-colored fingernails were tainting his drink._

_I grimaced. "You're kidding, right? He has one eye-"_

_Another punch, and this time I felt it. "Look at him, ya fuckin' stupid shit. Where's his holster?"_

_I looked again. And... his holster was on his left leg, Ruger Super Redhawk .44 sitting in it patiently. His left hand was on his thigh, surprisingly still compared to the right one._

_"... Huh. On his left-"_

_"'Bout fuckin' time, kid. If you had drawn, he would'a had the advantage. You would'a had to turn your body, he wouldnt've." Jericho gulped down his vodka, dirt and all. A grudging respect had creeped into his gruff voice. "Fuck it, kid, you don't roll with caravans unless yer the best, and he did it with one eye. Ya dun fuck with him."_

_I looked again at Jimmy Creel, with a new understanding. A little shock ran through me when I realized he was looking at me, and not warmly- that left eye of his was sharp. Freakishly sharp._

_"Now, we're gonna have anoth'a go. Ready?"_

_I sighed. It was training, but plotting to kill your neighbors was a really disturbing mental exercise._

* * *

_I looked at it, and it looked at me._

_It was amazing, really. In all the time I had been out of the Vault, I had seen nothing like this. Even the robot deputy outside the Megaton gate wasn't as mind-blowing as this._

_Jenny Stahl, cleaning chipped glasses with a dirty scrap of rag and plenty of spit, leaned over her bar. "What'cha lookin' at, huh?"_

_I couldn't exactly find the words. It was just... something else._

_"It... it..." I shook my head, my eyes wide and mouth hanging open. "It has _two heads!_"_

_"Oh, you mean the Brahmin? Yeah, it does." Stahl went back to cleaning glasses, rolling her eyes. "Really that interesting to you?"_

_But it was! Which head controlled the legs? Did each get a front and a back leg, or did each one have the front two or the back two? Did they see what the other head saw? Were the heads telepathic? Did it have one spine or two? How many stomachs? Four? Eight?_

_"If yer so interested, you can just cut it open to find out what's inside."_

_I looked back to the Brahmin, and it- they- were staring at me. And not in a friendly way. Maybe... dissection wasn't a great idea._

_Those four horns were pretty sharp looking, after all._

* * *

Had to keep moving. That was the only thought going through my head. My leg muscles were screaming, threatening to lock up any second. My shoulder was burning, stinging, infected again- I could feel the cold pus running down my arm.

The Capitol Wasteland stretched before me, the same sand-choked skeleton of a landscape its been for the past two hundred years- all brutal canyons and sheer, jagged cliffs, with nothing but sand dunes dotted with sharp rocks in between. There weren't even any tumbleweeds out there- they had all burnt away under an uncaring sun. I squeezed my eyes shut against a strong gust of wind, fine dust clogging my mouth and nose. I coughed, my entire body spasming with exhaustion.

West. I had to keep going west. Into the sunset. If Talon Company suspected any deserters, they'd head west. Where I was going. But the western side of the Trough- or what used to be the Trough, now that the raider outpost had probably been blasted to rubble by then- had the most mines laid down. It was my best bet, and I occasionally heard a few explosions echoing in the distance.

But it was so hard to breath. My head hurt like all the pistol whips and rifle butts I'd ever gotten were coming back all at once.

_That son of a bitch._

_That son of a fucking bitch._

I had to stop. My mouth was dry,tongue sticking to the roof of my mouth, not enough water in me to sweat, fingers and toes without feeling. I had been walking for hours, and I couldn't go any longer. But I knew if I stopped... I wouldn't get up. So I kept going. With a shambling, foot-dragging walk, I kept going.

Jim had known. He had known those Talon Company mercs were coming, and he knew how strong they were, not only in number, but in bloodlust. He had known, at let his men go one by one into the grinder.

Then why did he recruit me? Waste a hundred good caps? What could one more gun have done? I hadn't done anything to even out that slaughter.

I just shook my head. Maybe he really was insane. Maybe he thought he could've won.

No... Jim wasn't stupid. A fucking maniac, but not stupid. Maybe... he had just wanted a _fight._

I winced, and not from staring into the setting sun for so long. That was it. Jim had called himself washed up... and wanted to go out with a bang. He had wanted not just an onslaught, but a fucking slaughter. That was how every raider wanted to go out- bloody. Jericho had told me that.

I couldn't take it. I threw up- but threw up nothing. I hadn't eaten in a while, rations being so low back at Jim's outpost; they didn't see me as that important, after all. So I just hacked up some thin, gritty spit, my throat crushing in on itself. My steps became even more staggering.

Why. Why did I leave the Vault? Why did I throw it all away? The things I had completely taken for granted- food, water, a safe place to sleep, people who wouldn't help me one moment and cannibalize me the next- were gone, now. Gone forever. The only lead I had about Dad was that he had gone east- and that was it. That was all I had accomplished.

I felt an angry hotness building behind my eyes. For all the praise, having the best GOAT exam results, for all the promise... I was a fucking _failure._ The only one who was willing even hint at that was the Overseer- everyone else just let it go. Even Amata, my best damn friend, saw me as something great. If only she knew how wrong she was...

Almost falling sideways into a gaping rocky canyon, I put all those thoughts out of my head. They wouldn't get me anywhere, now. Besides, Jericho would call me a pussy for getting so pissed over what was out of my hands, now.

So I just stared into that big, sore red eye staring back at me, and stumbled west.

* * *

Finally.

This was it.

The sun had dipped below the toothy ridge of mountains to the west not long ago, but with the light left my will to live.

Looking for so long into the sun had messed with my eyes, leaving me almost blind in the evening slight. My sight was a horrible mash of greens and purples and oranges- colors I hadn't seen in a long time. It almost made me want to throw up again, but I knew I couldn't.

I was making my way down a steep slope, carelessly knocking rocks down as I went. They made long, ringing echoes as they rolled and bounced along the cliffside- if there was anyone around, they'd hear it. If there was anyone around, they'd kill me.

If that was the case, I couldn't have been happier. I had thrown away Jim's old M1 Garand hours ago, and with it all the .30-06 bullets. It was amazing- I felt so light without all that firepower. I still had his Colt 1911, but... I couldn't throw that away. My fingers needed something to hold onto, with my knife gone.

So close, now.

I had crawled up the sides of canyons and cliffs and tumbled down just as many. How I did it, right on the brink of death, I didn't know. My face stung with sunburn, my lips cracked and bleeding. I felt all those days of sitting in the cage at Paradise Falls coming back, those days of rotting away in the sun, surrounding by nothing but more decay. More hopelessness.

But now, I was done. My fingernails ripped and bleeding, my throat ragged with gasping and coughing on dusty air, I was done.

It felt good, being able to give up. No one would blame it. It was too hard. It was beyond anything anyone back at the Vault could've done. It was good enough. I sure wasn't proud of myself, but shit, at that point, any sort of death was good enough.

But even with that defeatist attitude, I had to have it be a little memorable. Like in the movies. Just flopping over and dying wouldn't do. So I decided- the next slightly interesting thing I came across, I'd die next to. So if someone found my shriveled and withered body, picked clean by molerats, someone would say, "He tried."

So I walked. Made it to the bottom of that last cliff, and walked. The sand beneath my feet felt more solid now, less like it was trying to suck me in and smother me then and there. Now that I had a goal- even if that goal was a not completely pitiful death- it seemed easier to walk. Just a little bit.

So I walked. I'm not sure for how long. What was another ten minutes? Fuck, what was another hour? I had ran my ass off from that Talon vs. raider killing floor for so long time seemed meaningless now. So I walked.

Eventually, the sky darkened even more, and I knew it was time. Day in the Wasteland was dangerous enough, but night... was something different. That's when the really fucked up things came out to play. The ones that go bump in the night. And by bump, I mean fucking kill you so hard you wouldn't recognize yourself.

The sand ended, and a rocky, rough kind of plain begun. I barely noticed, probably wouldn't have if I hadn't hit it headfirst. I laid there for a second, wondering how I had gotten from standing up to the ground so quickly, when I noticed a fence behind me. A wooden fence. Huh. I must've just fallen over it like a sleepwalking dumbass. I wasn't surprised.

But something else in the darkness caught my eye. Dying next to a fence wouldn't be so bad- someone would find some deep, mysterious meaning in it, I guess- but I could probably do better. So I got to my feet- and fell over.

Okay. No more walking. So I crawled over a little ways, my bloody knees barely feeling the rocky dirt, and before I knew it, I had bumped heads with the one thing I thought I'd never see again.

A Brahmin.

It looked at me, and I looked at it... them. Those four eyes stared right through my soul- but at that point, there probably wasn't much to see. Just an emaciated, empty-eyed fuck who had had it all- except for common sense.

That was good enough. Dying next to a mutant cow thing. What the fuck else was there? My arms had given out anyways, so there I lay next to the Brahmin, staring up into a starless black sky.

I closed my eyes and died. There were worse ways to go.


	14. Clouds Without a Care

_My whole body ached. Every muscle. The wobbly metal chair barely held my weight, but anything to save me a little energy was more than welcome. The training never seemed to end...  
_

_Now, I just needed to find a way to approach this topic without getting my head blown off._

_"Jericho..."_

_The internal parts of his AKS-74U were scattered across the rusted three-legged table, scrubbed of grime and shining with grease. He didn't look up picking the sand out of his Makarov PM. "Whatcha want?"_

_I kept sharpening the blade of my knife, to try to not look too interested. And besides, I liked that knife. "It's... just Jenny. You know- Stahl. Jenny Stahl."_

_Jericho locked back the slide of his Makarov, and finding the chamber empty, dropped the magazine and began to field strip the pistol._

_"Did... something happen between you two? Anything?"_

_He pried off the slide, running a finger along the scratched barrel. "Why'a askin'?" His voice was slower then usual. Careful._

_I shrugged, turning the knife in my hands. For being so scratched and beaten-up, it sure did shine in the sun. But it was a dull shine. Like the flat gleam in the eyes of someone who's seen too much. Too much for anyone to bear. "You never talk to her. Or look at her. You always take a different route if you might run into her. You've told me everything about everyone in Megaton but her." I shrugged again. "That's all."_

_It was a harder day than usual- heavy winds had picked up, leading to a horrific combination of a sand storm and a dust storm. Couldn't see ten feet ahead, couldn't breath, sand got in your eyes and mouth and nose like broken glass. It was only on account of the weather we were staying inside; Jericho would've had me out training, to get used to the awful conditions we'd be dealing with, but there are times when even Jericho has had enough._

_Don't get me wrong. It's not like I didn't like hanging out with Jericho or anything. It's just that... we gave each other breathing room. And his tiny, rundown shack isn't what you'd call spacious._

_Jericho had his bayonet out so fast the sunlight didn't have time to reflect off the blade. The point laid dead still, right under my chin._

_"Sharpen this fer me, will ya?" Christ, he hadn't even looked up from the table._

_I gulped, and took the bayonet, scraping the scrap of steel against the blade again and again._

_It didn't make sense then, and it probably never will, but that day... I knew things were going to change._

_

* * *

_

So weak.

Like a tumbleweed rolling along in a lazy breeze. I didn't know-

So weak.

My muscles were heavy, so heavy it didn't seem like they were mine, just lead coating my skeleton. When I breathed, my whole chest tightened with the effort, my throat pinching closed with the pain of it. It almost felt like it'd be easier to just stop breathing. To stop hurting.

So tired.

I tried to move, but couldn't. Something was stopping me. So I started with my fingers, feeling the pins and needles run along the fingertips as I fought to make the swollen knuckles move. Oh, fuck it all. It hurt.

Opening my eyes almost knocked me out again- it was too bright. I couldn't hear anything, just the desperate pounding of a weary heart. I didn't know where I was- laying down? But my skin felt numb, like just a shell I was using until I found a better one.

Why was I still alive?

I guess most people would've cried in happiness and relief, that sort of shit. But not me. I just twitched around some more, spasms of pain helping me work the feeling back into my fingers, my toes, my skin. I tried opening my eyes again- only to only blind myself, again. Blues and greens and oranges flashed across the inside of my eyelids. Christ. Must be daytime. But it's not that hot...

I had to stop and catch my breath, coughing violently from the effort of waking my motor skills. Something warm on my cracked and dry lips made them sting- blood. Great. Dying of malnutrition, internal bleeding, exposure- what else to add to the list?

But then I felt something else on my lips that nearly made me bark out in surprise. Just a gentle brush, like a cool breeze. Those cows, maybe, looking for food? My shoulder joint screaming in pain, I tried to move my arm, try to touch my mouth with twitching fingers. But then came the touch again- this time, at my hand.

"Take 'er easy, cowboy."

My breath caught in my throat as my hand was slowly lowered back to my side. I tried to open my mouth, to ask who, what, everything, anything- but all that came up was more hacking and sputtering from my ragged throat. And more blood.

Something propped my head up, and I felt something I had almost forgotten at my lips- water. But what if it was poisoned? Radiactive? None of those thoughts crossed my mind as I drank desperately, my teeth scraping against the tin. Hell, I downed it so fast I almost threw it back up again.

That was nice. Having that pool of coolness in my stomach felt weird, somehow, but it was a good feeling. I breathed a bit easier, my sore throat slicked. I opened my eyes...

And standing above me, surrounded by bright light, was a gray-eyed girl, no older than me.

I passed out. Anyone else would've done the same.

I don't know when I came to. It wasn't as bright as before- because of adjusting to the light or from the time, I didn't know. But I forced my eyes open, squinting at me surroundings.

I was lying on a cot, blankets and everything- probably the cleanest one I've ever seen in the wasteland. Above my head were the beams of rafters, disappearing into dusty darkness. Sturdy wooden panel walls, unmatching windows with drawn patched curtains, some chairs, a table in the corner.

Just looking around tired me out. I let my head fall back onto the cot, wondering what the hell was going on. And that gray-eyed girl...

Sickness boiled in my stomach, and I had to fight the urge to vomit. No no no no no. She was dead. Killed by a sniper. Those raiders, the raiders that came out of nowhere. There's no way she...

Movement to my right. I turned my head (too fast, and got a sore neck and a headache).

She sauntered easily into the room, long brown leather duster swaying along like it was part of her. Sitting down on a chair next to the head of the bed, she bent forward to get a good look- and so did I.

Not gray eyes. Blue, like the sky on the worst of the hot days. Sunbleached hair tied into a tight braid, slung around her shoulders. But her face... there was something wrong about it. I couldn't figure it out.

She smiled. "Gonna keep 'wake this round? 'R best two outta three?"

I blinked. That was it. She... didn't have the frown lines around her eyes, the tired circles under. Her teeth weren't worn down from grinding in worry, her lips not pressed thin from pursing.

Who was she?

"Wh-" I tried to prop myself up a bit, but my elbows weren't up for the effort. Coughing, I tried again. "Wh... who..."

With a look of understanding, she reached over to the bedstand, handing me a tin of water. "We'll shoot th' shit later."

I took a few quick gulps, cleared my throat, and tried one more time. "No... no, really. Who... are you?"

"Not th' bushbeatin' kind, are ya?" She took back the tin, and standing up, walked over the the window and opened the curtains, flooding the room with dusty light. "Sheriff Ashecroft, at yer service," she said, head held high.

Sheriff? The hell? And then I noticed the gold star pinned to her duster, and I felt the water in my belly run cold. Shit. A Regulator. That's why she took me in. And I had been rolling with Jericho, a full-blown raider. Shit. Shit. Sheriff Simms was as kind the law could be out here, and even then he was a hardass. But this girl...

"What's a sheriff doing all the way out... here?" I asked. All day yesterday, I hadn't seen a living thing. Looking out the window- just sand and rock. Was there another settlement nearby?

"Someone's gotta keep th' peace." She put a hand on her hip, pushing back her duster and revealing a monster of a revolver sitting in her holster. I would've gulped if my throat wasn't so dry. A Colt Walker? Even Simms didn't pack anything like that... "'N th' same t'ya. What brings ya all th' way out here? Not tryin' to swipe m' Brahmin, were ya?"

... Brahmin? Oh. Right. The cows. "No. That's not it." As much as it hurt, I still had some dignity; I pulled myself into a sitting position, my back muscles feeling like they'd snap any second. I rubbed at my face, finding my eyebrows and beard full of dirt. "Raiders."

That got Ashecroft's attention. She cocked her head to the side, an unsettling glint in her eyes. "Y'dun say?"

"Uh huh." I scratched at my neck, expecting the slave collar to be there- but it was gone, and my fingernails dug into sensitive skin. I gave a small gasp, reaching all around my neck- I hadn't even noticed. It was gone. "They put... this one me." I look at the girl, dread filling me. "But it's gone now." Now I owed her. The one thing you never want in the wasteland is debt. If Jericho taught me anything, it was that.

She nodded, a smirk of satisfaction tugging at her lips. "Thought as much. Hope ya dun' mind swipin' it off ya- scrappin' them things is one of the few ways to make grenades." Her expression became serious so quickly I almost didn't notice. "But... yer in shitty shape. Ya were plumb dead when I found ya, and lady luck must've fucked yer brains out or somethin', 'cause ya still look like a corpse."

"Yeah. I noticed." My Adam's apple hurt whenever I talked. That fucking collar. "Um... Sheriff. Look, when I ran for it, there was a hell of a firefight going on. Not just raiders, but Talon Company, too."

Ashecroft cocked her head slightly. I guess that was her thing. "Talon Company, all th' way out 'ere? Mmmm." She reached under the cot, pulling out a pack of Marlboros. She offered me one, but I shook my head. She didn't light it, though- just chewed on it thoughtfully. "'Ny idear why?"

"No." Now that the room was properly lit, I could see my duster on the table in the corner. And on it, Jim's Colt 1911 and magazines. She followed my gaze. "What I'm saying is that they might come this way-"

"They won't."

I blinked. "What?"

"Talon dun' work this far out. Sewers n' urban sprawl is their thing." Ashecroft left the room for a minute, leaving me to my thoughts. This far out? Just how far... was that?

She came back with another tin of water and a bowl, handing me the tin and setting the bowl on the bedside table. "So yer safe, I reckon."

I stared at my reflection in the water. Christ, I did look like shit. Skin hugged my skull like I had been mummified, my beard all over the place, eyes sunken into their sockets. With a grunt, I drained the tin and set it down. "Good."

As I reached over for the bowl- which appeared to be some sort of thick stew, smelling horrible, yet my salivary glands didn't seem to mind- Ashecroft leaned forward closer, getting a good hard look at me. I could count the freckles on her nose.

"Ya have a name, cowboy? Dun' tell me ya forgot." When she had her eyes narrowed like that, I could see how this girl- this woman- could survive in a hellhole like this.

I met her eyes, wondering what she saw. "Out here, I don't have one." The stew, cold as it was, was damn good.

A few days passed. After the bullshit Jim put me through, Ashecroft made life seem like the Vault again.

Rest and decent meals got me back on my feet- that, I was going to use the outhouse like a man, not shit myself like a fucking raider. I still had dignity.

But it was the long walk to the outhouse that made me think twice about my new acquaintance. A little ways off, tucked behind a short cliff, was a cemetery. At first I didn't know what I was looking at, a bunch of mounds in neat rows with rocks or sticks at their heads. There were thirty, maybe forty.

I stuck my hands into the pockets of my duster and considered using the outhouse again. She was a regulator. She killed raiders for a living- and probably for enjoyment, too. And what was I? Just an onlooker? Jericho taught me every trick of the trade, that slaver's cage nearly made an animal out of me, and Jim made me fight alongside him. An onlooker? Like she would fall for that shit.

On the walk back, I stopped by one of her Brahmin, petting one of the heads. I guess I didn't have much choice, now. I was still too weak to put up a fight.

"On yer feet 'lready? Shit, yer somethin' else. Or plumb crazy. Maybe both."

I fought the urge to spin on my heel. Christ, for those cowboy boots (_spurs_ and everything, for fuck's sake!), she walked softly.

"Had to get up sooner or later. Besides, that was your bed, isn't it?"

"Yeah, but still." She poked at my ribcage. "Yer no brand'a fightin' fit."

"Don't want to be an ungrateful guest." I sighed, turning around to face her. In the late morning light, her Regulator hat cast soft shadows across her lightly tanned face. But that little spark never left her eyes. Always there, like the patient point of an unsharpened knife. "You've... done a lot for me. And all I've done is eat your food, drink your water and make your bed smell like shit. Can't I help you, somehow?"

Ashecroft snorted, taking her hat off and beating it against her thigh to shake out the dust. "Duty's duty. Regulator can't jus' work a dyin' man, much less turn 'im out." But there was a little edge to her voice... _unless you aren't just a man._

She walked over to the Brahmin, patting it on the head affectionately. It nuzzled its nose- er, noses- into her palm. Huh... for being a bloodsoaked killer, she had uncalloused hands. Slender fingers and soft palms, but strong all the same...

"How did you become a regulator, anyways? You're the second one I've ever met."

She didn't look up. "Runs in the' fam'ly. M' pap's line o' work, now mine." She gave a modest little shrug. "Left big boots t' fill. Best ring'r this side'a th' Mississippi. But I'm 'is daughter," Ashecroft said with a small smile. If I hadn't seen that mass grave, I would've called that arrogance.

"And... where is he now?"

"Bit the dust."

"Oh." I couldn't help myself. "How?"

She paused, turning slightly, just enough to bead one of those razor eyes on me. "Raiders. The toughest, meanest fuckin' band of 'em you'd ever seen."

No surprise there.

"Four of 'em. Any less, m' pap would'a had 'em." She didn't sound sad, or angry, or... anything, really. Just like she was commenting on the weather. "They jus' came outta the dust, like th' waste itself. Bayonets, grenades, machine guns and rifles- somethin' outta nightmares."

I felt my blood slow. Staring out into the distance, I could almost see them again.

Like the wasteland itself... personified into all that hatred, all that desperation, all that hopelessness...

But_ four?_

"Came at high noon." She smirked at that. "But pap was ready. Gave 'em the fight o' their lives, takin' down three. But the last one got a lucky shot." She turned to me, spreading her arms wide. "Bigger than a mutant, but smart 'nough to be crueler than any man. Tattoos 'n scars all over 'im, wearing bones like skin. Eyes white 'nough to stare down death."

I would never forget that face. Not even if I wanted to.

_We are killing you._

I crossed my arms. "Something tells me... you're planning on bringing these guys to justice?"

She nodded, hands on her hips. "Either their heads 'r their hides."

I didn't tell her then. I just walked back to her house and grabbed the weathered pail on her porch, setting it under the Brahmin.

"Show me how to milk this thing. Things."

She smiled.

I'm not sure why Ashecroft trusted me as much as she did. Maybe Regulators were that kind- letting complete strangers into their home, friend or enemy.

She wasn't stupid, obviously. My- no, Jim's Colt 1911 was always out of arm's reach. Sometimes she stuck them behind her studded belt, or put them on short table a ways away. Enough to let me know they were there, and enough to dare me to make a go for them.

But I didn't. That would come later.

So I took to dealing with other things. Helping her purify the water that came from the nearby spring (more of a sad trickle than a spring, really, but it did its job), milking the Brahmin, sweeping back the sand, anything. I didn't want to be dead weight. I wanted- needed some feel of order, of society. All those months before had given me a second skin, one of rage and bloodthirst that I wanted to peel away. But whether the old me was still underneath...

"'Ey, cowboy!"

I glanced away from the dusty and cracked mirror, just in time to catch Ashecroft's knife. Christ, a second longer and I'd be missing a nose.

"It's gonna break if ya look much longer!" She called from outside an open window, sundried clothes under her arm. She had an a hell of an throw... "How 'bout a shave?"

I looked at the bowie knife in my hand, feeling its weight. Nicely balanced... Jericho would've kept this one for himself. I tested my thumb against the edge, and finding it sharp, I began to slice away at that forest of my face.

Maybe I was under there. Or maybe it was someone else. Something else.


	15. Pins and Springs

_One._

_Two three four..._

_I stop, taking a deep breath._

_"Don't puss out now."_

_I grit my teeth. Five six five four three..._

_"Fuck!" I groan as the blade buries its point deep into my middle knuckle. "Fucking fuck fuck shit fuck cunt!"_

_Moriarty's Saloon explodes in laughter as the settlers and wasters circling the table throw down caps, some making bigger bets, others pulling out. Jericho chuckles to himself, swigging his stale vodka. "Not bad, kid. Most don't make it to three on their first go."_

_Gob looks at me sympathetically and pulls out a surprisingly clean rag from under the bar counter. I wrap it around my finger, trying to staunch the blood, but the slice was deep. Five finger fillet... is not my game._

_Jericho finishes off his drink, and bringing the dirty glass down on the table hard, picks up his bayonet. "Watch 'n learn," he says coolly, and the blade becomes a blur._

_

* * *

_

It's another hot day. Days are always hot in the wasteland, hot and dry, but there was something about that day. It felt...

"... 'S a bad day, cowboy."

I blinked. Ashecroft leaned her elbows against the wooden fence, chin resting on her hands as she looked over the wide, empty desert stretching in front of us. I hadn't noticed her approach- and she was only a few inches away from me. I wondered how long she had been there... and just how dull my senses were getting. Maybe Jericho and Jim had made my life worse than hell, but at least they had kept me in top shape.

I shook my head. Never think positively of Jim. Not of that motherfucking bastard of a bitch. No, just- I erased the thought as soon as it came.

"Y'dun think so?"

"What? Uh, no, I... yeah. Feels bad. Wrong somehow." I shifted my elbows on the fence, feeling the splinters dig into my dry skin through my duster. "Like a day you realize something you've been meaning to realize for a long time, and it's too late. Heavy."

Ashecroft looked at me thoughtfully from under the brim of her hat. "There been'a lotta 'too lates' fer ya?"

An uncomfortably warm breeze picked up, sand and dust swirling around our boots. I shrugged. "I guess. I'll probably know sooner or later."

"Yeah."

I liked Ashecroft. There was something in the way she simply gave a damn sparked hope that there were decent human beings still out there. Probably weren't enough to balance out all the sick fucks, and I probably wasn't helping out the 'sane' side of the balance, but...

Ashecroft reached behind her studded old belt, pulling out Jim's Colt M1911 and its spare magazine. She held them out toward me, her fingers opening up like a flower.

"I don't want it."

She put her head to the side, puzzled. "Say what?"

"I don't... _want_ it," I whispered, my voice feeling thick. For the fifteen days living with Ashecroft, I had managed to push away all the shit- sweating in some slavers' barbed-wire cage, those kids in the Trough who were butchered by Talon Company, the gray-eyed girl throwing her life away, and Jericho- God dammit, Jericho- "I..._ can't."_

"'S yers-"

I fought the urge to throw up. "No, it's not. It belongs to a raping murdering enslaving asshole, and now he's dead. Now it's no one's."

Ashecroft blew out a long breath, clamping down on a gnaw-marked cigarette she pulled out of her duster pocket. We just stared out into the distance, watching the swollen sunset just begin to touch the sand, and then-

"'Ow ya gonna live, cowboy?" She asked softly. "'Ow ya gonna_ survive?_ Hurts, but 's th' only w-"

"I don't know. I don't _know._" I pulled back from the fence, staring at everything and nothing, my eyesight full of greens and purples and oranges from staring at he sun too long. "I just don't _know._ You can do this- you can kill, steal, what the fuck ever- but I can't. I _can't_. I- I- I-"

I reached for my knife, wanting to bury it into my hand, to shock myself out of this weakness. But of course, it was gone, sheathe in all. With a wild, throat-tearing scream of frustration, I slammed my fists hard against the fence, again and again until my hands were bloody with splinters. Breathing hard, gripping the lintel until my knuckles were bloodless, I turned to Ashecroft, feeling my face twisted into a deranged snarl. "My entire life- my _entire fucking life_- I was taught, brainwashed that none of this was real! Nineteen years, that fucking hole in the ground was_ all I knew!_ And now- and _now_- that's all _gone_, everything I understood-"

Ashecroft reached up, put a hand on my shoulder, but I pulled away, clawing at my throat where that collar had noosed me for so long. I could still feel it. "I abandoned _everything!_ My only friends, safety- to chase after my dad, and who the fuck knows where he is now? It doesn't even matter anymore! He's probably dead!"

There. I said it. And once I did, all my rage, all that blame I had built up inside me- towards Amata, towards the Overseer, towards my dad, towards Jericho- bled right out of me, blowing away like ash on the evening breeze. I took a deep, shaky breath, and screamed again- not out of anger. Out of hopelessness. The ringing death cry of a civilized human being.

The Brahmin brayed in anxiety, shuffling farther away from us. Ashecroft said nothing, just stared at me intently with those edged eyes. I put my back against the fence, sliding to the ground, sweaty face buried in my hands. In all the time I was in the wasteland, on the surface- I had never wanted to die more than at that moment.

She cocked the pistol and laid it at my feet. I listened to her spurred footsteps fade into the distance, the creaky door to her shack close. The Brahmin nosed at some tufts of bone-dry crabgrass.

_We are killing you._

You got me, I thought to myself as I raised the gun to my head. You got me.

The barrel felt cool against my temple, the weight of the pistol just right. The grip, somehow, formed to my hand perfectly.

_You killed me._

I pulled the trigger, and the world disappeared with a savage roar.

_

* * *

_

The roar of blood thumping away in my ears.

I opened my eyes. The evening seemed brighter, somehow.

I looked at the gun in my hands. I cocked the slide, and a .45 ACP round loaded itself into the chamber.

_She... palmed the bullet._

The M1911 felt so heavy in my hands, then. It felt like sand falling from through my calloused fingers, settling into the dust.

My eyes felt a hotness behind them. I grit my teeth, pressing my hands into my face, and cried. Sobbed like a little bitch.

And I knew, just knew- Ashecroft was watching from the window. I felt so ashamed at the thought.


	16. Second Strike

Enough talk about feelings. Gunplay and death abound soon, bet on it. Short chapter beforehand, though, so bear with it.

* * *

I sat there in the dust for a long time.

But I wouldn't gain anything from feeling sorry for myself. Not a damn thing.

I pulled my hands away from my face, sticky with sweat and salt. Rubbing at my eyes and nose, I looked down at my grime-caked hands only to find them lost in darkness- night had swallowed me up without my noticing, a chilly breeze cooling my sweat and making me shiver. But my thoughts were elsewhere- concentrated on the Colt M1911 sitting between my legs. Waiting for me.

I just looked at it. How many defenseless people had been shot apart by this thing? I shook my head. Why the fuck was I thinking about this _now?_ When Jericho and I had stumbled across that old Mosin-Nagant, propped up straight in the sand like some sort of tribal totem or monument, I didn't bother to think of who had used it, or what is had done. But it was _now_- now that I had seen what Jericho had told me horror stories of, now I understood.

_If it wants t'kill you, kill it first._

Jericho's first lesson had gone straight over my head. Why the fuck hadn't I listened? Why the fuck did I stay in my own little world?

_Because I thought everything would be okay once I found Dad. I thought everything was my little metal hole in the ground._

I sighed, rubbing at my eyes again. Slowly, I reached out, jagged fingernails barely grazing the sand as I wrapped my fingers around the rough grip. I lifted it from the dirt like some long-lost treasure, wiping away streaks of dust, feeling the countless scratches criss-crossing the slide as I ran my fingers over it.

Jim got this from somewhere. Maybe, at one point, it was used... for a just cause.

It was a stupid, naive, childish thought, but it was the only one that I had left.

With a grunt, I pushed myself to my feet and stumbled back to Ashecroft's cabin-shack, pushing open the door and expecting to find her there- and she was, humming away by sputtering candlelight, sitting at her workbench, casually greasing the chambers of her Colt Walker.

She stopped her little tune as I entered, turning around- sliding a .45 slug into the chamber of her revolver, I noticed with a tightness in my chest- and looked at me hard, chewed-up unlit cigarette hanging off her lip.

"I had two mags for this," I said, flicking a finger against my pistol. "I'd have 'em back."

She grinned, slicing the cig clean in half.

* * *

Her father had taught her well. She was every inch the killer Jericho had wanted me to grow into. Bowie knives stabbed into the walls in neat rows, pouches of gunpowder, crates of military-grade bullets, a bullet press, for fuck's sake- this was more of an armory than a house. But that's how you live in the wasteland.

I sat down next to her and began field stripping the M1911 as Ashecroft slid the spare magazines across the workbench. "Thanks."

"'Course." She let the single round fall from her revolver's cylinder and continued to see to it, scouring the inside of the barrel with a bristley brush. "'Course."

We didn't say anything for a while. Just cleaned the bits and pieces and pins and springs of our guns, Ashecroft sharpened her knives, I picked out the rust from beneath my fingernails with my pistol's firing pin, all of this as that candle burned down and filled the cabin with the sick stench of brahmin fat. It was only once I was stowing my spare mags in my duster and stood to head to the outhouse did Ashecroft speak again.

"Glad ya changed yer way." I stopped at the door, looked back at her over my shoulder. She was still bent over the workbench, the glow of the lone candle giving her an otherworldly outline. "Wouldn'ta wanted 'cha to join th' back."

"You killed all those men." My voice was barely above a weak whisper.

"Men, women, children, y'name it. Feed th' cirtters to th' brahmin." That didn't surprise me in the least- those double-head cows didn't have normal teeth. What surprised me less was how she spoke of the dead- like talking of the weather. "Not a hair close t'my pap, though. Put a raider army in th' ground in 'is day."

I nodded, partly to myself, before stepping off the porch and making my way to the outhouse. Before taking a well-needed piss I just stared at those mounds of dirt and rock, wondered what she had felt when she took those lives.

_Did she feel nothing? Just recoil, the warmth of blood, the give of flesh and bone? Was she... just like me?_

I shook my head, and opened the door to the outhouse. It was only then I noticed out of the corner of my eye a spattering of sand dunes in the distance, more than twice my size. I had passed it on my way to Ashecroft's ranch, and spent a time looking at them during sunsets- the light caught on them beautifully. It was only then I realized...

That isn't sand. That's hard dirt and clay, braced with rock... just like those graves of hers.

It took a lot of self-control to not piss myself right there. Ashecroft wasn't shitting about her father. And I had called her collection of dead a_ mass grave_... what a rookie I was.

Of course, I thought, as I pissed my stress away... maybe Ashecroft wasn't giving me the whole story. But there was only one way to really find out.

Buttoning up my ragged pants, I jogged back to the cabin. Ashecroft didn't look up as I came in.

"Ashecroft. I want to find the men who killed your dad."

She looked up. Her eyes were stormier than the skies that bled the waters of life.

* * *

We slept back-to-back that night, just like how Jericho and I did when we were out ranging (more accurately, struggling to survive) the cold merciless nights of the waste. However, Ashecroft had a few shaggy, bruise-colored blankets on hand- not too clean, but thankfully thick and warm.

What was I doing? Playing the hero? I had done that all the fucking time in the vault, always trying to end arguments and debates- usually failing, with some means of compromise that left everyone pissed or worse. My dad had always complimented me on it, if wistfully; he said that some things are best left to be.

Ashecroft shifted slightly in her sleep, brushing against the back of my duster. I tried to breath a bit more quietly, a bit more evenly- she was a light sleeper.

But I couldn't leave this. Not now. I had let others control my life since the day I was born- the Overseer, my dad. Once I was out of the vault, I was so lost I clung onto the only guidance I could find.

Jericho.

But now he was dead as could be, leaving me with his advice and skills, no matter how coarse they were. I was alone again. But now... I didn't feel so hopeless. I had a fucking mission. I'd find the fucks who killed Ashecroft's dad, and I'd butcher them like the shits they were. I'd pile them into an adobe grave that towered above all the others. I'd rip away the choking shadow that had been thrown over Ashecroft by her dad's death, the same way she ripped away the shadow of the underground from me.

I sighed. Tired as I was, I couldn't sleep. The cot was comfortable enough, but my blood was raging. I wanted to kill, and I wanted to kill _now_. I remember the way officer Mack looked at me back when I was escaping the vault, like he was looking at a dog that had to be put down. At first I thought, "How could someone ever come to think that way?" But now I knew. He had a cause he would die for. And now, I did as well. I just hoped it was a just one.

"No sleep, no fight, cowboy."

I nearly fell out of the bed at the sound of the soft voice. Ashecroft sat up, looking at me thoughtfully. It was kind of weird, really, seeing her without her sheriff's hat on. At least she slept in her duster, minus the pointy badge. "Uh... shit. Sorry. Wake you up?"

"Y' breath meaner than no mutie I dun seen," she said, a smirk tugging at her lips as she straightened the patched blankets a bit, giving me the less frayed ends.

I sighed, swung my legs over the side of the bed, held my head in my hands. "I'm sorry," I mumbled. "I just... never got used to this." I shrugged. "You know. Trying to sleep, but waiting to die. I mean- I tried to sleep with my eyes open, once, and it took me like three days to get all the sand out."

"Must'a been better 'n yer lil' home-hole." She reached out and patted me on the shoulder.

"Nah." The moon castes odd, rippling light through the dust of the night. I watched it make little nightmarish shapes on my bare feet. "I was no one in there. At least out here, I'm my own no one."

"Horseshit. Dun gimme th' "no-name" song n' dance. Ya need a_ name._"

I didn't see why she was so... forceful about this. It's just a name... "You care because... ?"

"'Cause I do." She tucked a strand of blond hair behind an ear. She then leaned forward slightly, cocked her head to the side a bit, her eyes seeming to cast their own little moonlight.

"Gravesend."

I paused. "Grave... send?"

She nodded curtly. "Meanest o' th' mean come outta there. Up north. Raider, scav, reg, y'name it."

I just looked at her, suddenly so much more tired than before. Part of me wanted to argue, but...

"I like it," I muttered grudgingly, nestling back into the cot.

"Good." She pulled the blankets back over us, and in that close warmth, I felt an odd bond begin to grow.


	17. Blue Sky New Sky, Take Three

The muzzle felt oddly cold against my forehead, though it had been there so long I'd thought it be warm.

"Keep breathin'. You know, that thing ya do? To live?"

I tried that, but my breaths came in and out all shaky, and the last thing I wanted to do now was shake.

Trying to ungrit my teeth, I whispered hoarsely, "How much longe-"

Jericho, sitting across the shack from me, was servicing his AKS-74U, not even looking at me. "Get used to the trigger weight. To the point where it's less'n a hair. Know your fuckin' gun, kid."

I pulled the C96 away with a sharp breath, setting it down hard on the table, making it wobble on its three legs. "Fuck it, Jericho," I groaned. "No one can do that for ten minutes straight. No one-"

In a second, had had crossed the room, loaded his carbine, and placed the barrel under his chin, and pulled the trigger.

A little more than halfway.

"Fuck!" I gasped, reaching out to pull the gun away from him, but he slapped my hands away.

"Know. Your. Gun," Jericho growled at me, grabbing my pistol and hitting me across the face with it.

God fucking dammit. This was survival? I already felt dead.

* * *

"Break's over, kid."

I mumbled something incoherent about five minutes as I lazily rolled over, wriggling into a more comfortably position in the wreckage, sighing sleepily. I promptly got a mouthful of sand, coughed and hacked like a dying man, and rolled onto my back. "Fuck," I groaned, blinking and rubbing the grit out of my eyes.

Jericho grabbed me roughly by the bandoleer across my chest- fuck it all, did I have to sleep with that damn thing on? Comfortable as a board of nails- and pulled me into a sitting position. My head swam with the rush of blood, and in the first light of dawn, Jericho's face was more nightmarish than usual, the shadows beneath his eyes bottomless. "Day's drainin'." Day? Fuck's sake, there were still stars out. I watched, filled with groggy awe as he clambered up the side of the bombed-out ruin, surprisingly spry for his age.

Stars. They were beautiful, if... different than I had imagined. I had expected the five-pointed point of light we had drawn again and again back in my younger vault days. But these- these were burning, raging eyes. They had nothing but scorn for the planet that, not long ago for them, but so long ago for us- had tried to be the brightest in the sky.

Earth paid for its arrogance.

Skidding back down in a cloud of dust and debris,Jericho handed a tattered rag to me- cool and moist. With a nod of gratitude, I wrung out the scrap over my mouth- only enough for a gulp, really, but shit, that was nothing to shake an AK at. "Thanks," I said, surprised at how the gravel had washed away from my voice.

Squeezing the night's condensation from his rag, he looked at me sidelong as he drank, not wasting a drop. "Thank me once the shit's shat." He tossed the patchwork handtowel to me, and I scrubbed at the festering insect bites that dotted my face, neck and wrists. I sniffed, finding my nose a tad clogged- little as they were, those bastards had mandibles like beartraps and carried every disease you could think of- and watched as Jericho crawled up onto what used to be a rooftop's chimney and scanned the land around us, AKS-74U gripped tight in his hands.

I wanted to call up and ask, "What do you see?" but I'd probably earn a punch in the jaw for making noise, giving away our position, all that. As if reading my mind, Jericho looked down at me, his once-tired eyes suddenly alive and glinting. His nightmarish mask had fallen, revealing a grinning, deranged face that made the damp rags in my hands feel so much colder.

"Fresh meat," he mouthed. My stomach growled. I felt sick, but differently than usual.

* * *

It really didn't get much easier than that. Not in the wasteland.

We laid prone at the edge of the ridge, watching the three shapes below slowly move along the morning-misted road. Squinting through that hazy gray twilight, that rare space in time where the sand's glare wouldn't blind you, I could tell that one had a rifle- an assault or battle rifle, from the way he held it- and led the other two, which from what I could tell, had their guns holstered or hanging.

My Mauser C96 was tight in my grip as I glanced over at Jericho. I had no idea what he was thinking, making us use pistols as this range, especially only 9mm- I mean, yeah, sure, there were only three, and it was less than a hundred feet- but I always thought it was best to overestimate your enemy, as opposed to being, say, dead.

Jericho looked over at me, our eyes locking, and nodded slowly. He side-crawled over a bit to where a small stack of rocks and rubble had been piled near the lip of the ridge- a little cover, Jericho had explained, for our gunfire. The sound of buildings and bridges collapsing was commonplace in the wasteland (thought I still jumped whenever a ten story building crashed over in front of me), but gunshots would always bring unwanted attention.

He placed his left hand on the piece of rebar acting as a lever, and his right held his Makarov PM. He nodded to me, and mouthed the words:

One.

I looked down the sights of my pistol, until it was lined up with the leader's head. _Why aren't my hands shaking?_

Two.

_I shouldn't feel this calm._

Three.

Jericho pushed down on the metal bar, forcing the rubble tumbling over the side of the ridge. I didn't even wait for the rocks to start rolling before I unloaded into the leading shape- five bullets, rapid. Three missed, but two counted- he clutched at his chest only to suddenly go rigid and hit the ground, one arm clawing for his dropped rifle, the other pinned beneath his body. The other two shapes froze for a tenth of a second before they sprang back, attempting to duck into cover of the rocks that lined the other side of the road.

But Jericho wouldn't have that.

Three shots. That was all it took. The two shapes flopped to the ground. One was still, while another curled over into a ball.

We had to act fast before any bonepickers showed up on the scene. Without giving each other a glance, Jericho and I half-skidded, half-ran down the small ridge, shaking off the last of the sand and stinking garbage we had camouflaged ourselves in, dashing over to secure our kills.

* * *

Two of them, anyway.

The lead, to Jericho's curt satisfaction, had carried a conditioned G3, four spare magazines, and had two RGD-5 grenades clipped to his belt- jackpot. The rifle and its ammo would make good caps 'round these parts- 7.62x51mm NATO was a round in high demand, after all. He had a Makarov PM as his sidearm- Jericho helped himself to two new magazines, looking over the body as he did.

"Steady your shots," Jericho scolded quietly as he clipped the grenades onto his leather flak vest. One bullet had shattered the lead scav's breatbone, the other had entered just above the throat. I was surprised he had kicked for so long, with wounds like those.

I moved on as Jericho dug through the tracker's backpack. The second scav to go down had... nothing, really. Just a hatchet at his waist, dull and nicked, the wood worn and splintering- not worth shit. Even so, I tugged off the dead bastard's shirt and pants (surprisingly good quality), putting them on under my duster and being grateful for the warmth. His dead, staring eyes didn't seem to mind- his new third eye was a little creepy, though, it being so red and dark.

The third... the third wasn't so good.

Another scav, this one a woman, only with a skinning knife clutched in her hands that had seen better days. I wondered why Jericho had taken two shots- could he tell she had armor, even in this light? She had been moving slower, after all- until I pulled at the folds of her jacket to get at her pockets, and realized she wasn't wearing armor.

I ran my gloveless hand over her bulging belly, still warm, though her eyes were glazed and her breath was gone. Her stomach twitched and thumped under my fingers, as if demanding freedom.

So that was it. That explained the tracker-scav acting as bodyguard. That explained the slow pace- why it was so easy to hunt them down.

I bit my lip as I pulled my combat knife from its sheath, holding a hand against the dead woman's stomach to steady myself. I could see Jericho watching out of the corner of my eye, but that meant nothing right now.

_Sorry, little guy. It'll be over soon. Real Quick._

One hard stab was all it took. I felt the skin and flesh and growing cartilage give way under the merciless, jagged teeth of my knife, twisting deep as the hilt. Hot blood spurted up, as if under pressure, washing my arm and front. There was sudden twitch- one that ran through the blade, the grip, my hand- one last pathetic twitch, and then my knife grew still.

I took a deep breath and wiggled the blade out, wiping it off on the woman's ragged jacket. Jericho, his pouches loaded with the tracker scav's loot, shook his head. "Wastin' your time, kid."

Couldn't say anything to that. Couldn't say anything at all. I felt vomit bubbling in my throat, something hot behind my eyes. I just closed my eyes and shook my head in turn.

"Whatever. Got what we came for." Jericho reached into one of his pouches and pulled out a bloody ear, waving it back and forth in my face. "Let's go get paid," he said, turning on his heel and melting into the dusty gray fog like a bad dream walking.

It was only four days later I broke down in the Megaton men's washroom, sobbing like a little bitch.

What made it so much worse was that without the caps from that hit, I wouldn't have the water in me to sob.

* * *

No one likes flashback-montage chapters, but aren't all necessities evil?


	18. Real Estate

_I stood at the mouth of the armory, peeking inside, wiggling my toes in my boots, feeling the gritty sand chafe between them. Between the sheet metal fortifications and the razor wire hugging the gray building like cobwebs, you'd think it was a torture chamber or something._

_Come on. Come on. What's the worst that could happen? Aside from being shot to death and my corpse being hung from the watchtower scaffolding for the buzzards to pick at?_

_The muscle posted at the front- two gladiatorial hulks of callouses and scar tissue armed with rifles four times older than me- quickly moved up to bar my way, one of them slapping a stony hand on my shoulder._

_"Turn around."_

_"I need to see-"_

_The grip on my shoulder tightened, and I felt the socket jump a bit. Ouch. "Turn. The fuck. Around."_

_"Sheriff Simms," I finished quietly, my voice cracking on the Regulator's name._

_The Megaton sentries shared a glance, and one stood between me and the blast door as the other stuck his head down the bunker's throat and hollered for Simms. A moment later, I was being escorted inside the armory- prodded along with a muzzle, to be exact- blinking in the musty darkness, the only light coming from the doorway._

_My eyes ran over the walls. Gun rack after gun rack. Crates of surplus bullets, grenades, landmines. A few RPG-7s hung on the far side, flanked by aisles of even more firepower. So this... this is what kept Megaton alive and running, kept the raiders at a wary distance. Enough hardware to start and end a war -and then enough left over for a rummage sale._

_But as my eyes adjusted to the gunmetal, I saw that I wasn't alone in this oasis of gunpowder. Four of Megaton's best sharpshooters were doing their rounds about the armory, cleaning and scouring and oiling. I watched with a mix of jealousy and dread- Jericho had forced me to memorize the exact sizes of ammo, the precise model and make of more guns than I thought existed. If I couldn't identify a gun by its muzzle being pointed my way, Jericho said coldly one evening, I wasn't worth my weight in water._

_That encouraged me._

_"Talk to me, boy."_

_I gave a little start. One moment he had been laying an anti-tank rifle (I bet Jericho didn't even know that one) back into its rack, the next Simms was right there at my shoulder, all fatherly smiles and jolly beard. My shoulders sagged, anxiety ebbing away at seeing such a friendly face, until I noticed the RPKS-74 slung over his back- and the fear came right back as I remembered what I came for._

_"Uh, afternoon, sir. Sorry to bother you, but, uh, you see..." I could feel the eyes of the shooters in the armory, but Simms was patient. His eyes, old and melancholy as they were, were clear and glimmered with an understanding I hadn't seen in a long time. "So let's say," I began, "hypothetically, I mean- that someone- no one in particular, really- wanted to set off the bomb."_

_Simms stroked his beard, eyes sparking with curiousity. "Well, now, I'd have to ask him to take a number. Megaton ain't been winnin' no popularity contests 'round these parts, boy." A series of knowing chuckles echoed in the bunker._

_"Okay, then let's say- hypothetically, I mean- I had a way to set off the bomb." With that, I fished out the fusion pulse rig out of the inside pockets of my duster, and laid them carefully on the workbench in front of us._

_There was a long, uncomfortable pause, and then a series of clicks as every carried gun in the room had its safety switched off. All but one._

_"Where did you get this?" Simms voice was still kind, but there was bonecracking steel beneath._

_I gulped, and looked away from those killing eyes. "Burke," I said softly._

_And that was all I needed to say._

* * *

_It had happened all so fast._

_Grave quiet in the saloon. All eyes on us. Cigarette smoke casting a curling haze over everything, blanketing the rafters. Stink of cured leather, dried blood, gunpowder. Sour smell of cheap vodka, sweat, Gob's tanned hide, of Nova's latest customer._

_Sharp words from Burke, a cool retort from Simms. Everyone tense, not daring to draw. Burke's face twisting into a cool sneer as he ashed his fat cigar, snapped off his sunglasses, and stuffed them into his breast pocket- while his right hand whipped to the pistol at his hip like lightning. My breath catching, I made a move for my C96 Mauser, but it was already over- a suppressed Beretta clattering to the wooden paneled floor, the sound like thunder in the silence. Simms, his hands twisting Burke's wrist and fingers to an impossible angle. And Burke, his face a mask of pure contempt as Simms calmly reached into the businessman's coat and withdrew two more pistols._

_Burke left with only a passing cutting comment. Simms sighed, and with a grunt, bent and picked the dropped pistol from the floor._

_"Many thanks, boy. Buy you a drink sometime." And off he went. All resumed in the saloon as if nothing had happened._

_I realized I was still gripping my C96. I let go, rubbing my dirty hands together, sweating, wondering._

_How had Simms survived so long?_

_How could I survive that long?_

* * *

I licked my dry, cracked lips. For a moment, I forgot how much they hurt.

That was... such an amazing feeling.

I turned the bowie knife over in my hands, letting my fingers run over the scratches and etches in the flat, the tiny nicks the ran along the edge, marveling at the way the sun ran freely along the blade like liquid wildfire. The hardwood hilt was tightly wrapped with sweat-softened leather, smelt like readiness and exhilaration that came with the hunt-

"Y'best gon' be careful w'that 'un, Graves. Y'hear?"

Ashecroft's surprisingly serious voice knocked me out of my reverie, and I glanced up those too-blue eyes, throwing a light of their own despite the shade of her hat. She had her own knife in her hands- a trench knife that came straight out of hell, jagged blade, spiked handguard and pommel, all that nastiness. It was almost unsettling the way she handled it like... an extra finger, or something. Just flowing along with her hand.

"Huh?" I looked back down at the bowie cradled in my hands like our firstborn. "Oh. Right. Right." As kind and generous a host Ashecroft might've been, I knew she'd be curing my skin for a new pair of boots if I let anything happen to her little knife. "Don't worry," I assured her, sheathing it slowly. Lovingly, almost.

She nodded and turned back to looking over our gear for the road ahead. Canteens for the both of us, a single camouflaged bedroll for me to carry (no complaints- kept the sun off me, and free of mutant ticks), pouches and bandoleers of ammunition. The M21 slung over my back felt odd- wasn't used to having a gun on my back, much less a marksman's rifle. Jericho had always forced me to keep my gun in my hands, or on my front- I was too slow a draw, he had said with no little scorn. He let me holster my sidearm, at least. On his less moody days.

Ashecroft, at least, trusted me- as far as she could put a throwing knife in me, which was pretty fuckin' far. I don't know is that came from hospitality being part of the Regulator's code, or that she was just a very nice girl. After a month of bunking with her, I guess it's a slice of both.

It didn't take all too much longer to ready ourselves. The sun had just rose, and we had a lot of sand to cover before we hit our first checkpoint- an abandoned power station southeast of Ashecroft's cabin. We had compared our info- I booted up the Pipboy, and after wading through some command prompts, "please insert recovery floppy" screens, and picking out some dirt from the crack in the glass, managed to bring up the map for the local area. Wasn't too useful- gave us an idea of what the area looked like before the bombs fell, a sort of out-of-the-way, industrial part of the city- but we used the elevation and distance calculators to our advantage. Sometimes, that shitty piece of plastic was worth the chafing it did. You know, all the sand and dust that got under the wristband. Hurt like a bitch.

Was I going to miss those easy with Ashecroft? Maybe. Waking up late, that sour Brahmin milk thick as eggwhites, there being a spring nearby (just an irradiated trickle, but still), having her fellow Regulators drop by on their patrols (and stare down my raider ass intently before Ashecroft called them off)- which explains the raiders' and Talons' reluctance to come this far west; this barren field of dunes was apparently closely-guarded Regulator turf. Something to do with the (relatively) clean springs that bubbled up from beneath the sands, so Ashecroft told me.

But there was one upside to doing away with the freeloading life.

I was free to play the most dangerous game.

A warm, foreboding breeze picked up, scattering sand across Ashecroft's meager porch, and I shook my head of these murderous thoughts as I moved up to help her.

"We really need all this?" I asked her for the ninth time. Jericho and I had always traveled light, relying on our trapping and scavving for food. Not a good way to live, but we were fast and hard to track because of it.

She tightened the buckled strap around one of our ration packs, crushing it into a more convenient size. "You bet yer bony ass, Graves. We Regs do bus'ness diff'rint than yer raider folk." She looked up at me thoughtfully, a smirk tugging at one side of her mouth. "Nev'r hurts t'know th' cut 'n range, though."

I mumbled a "yeah, I guess" before wandering around to the other side of the gear pile, quadruple-checking everything as I rubbed the dead skin off my callousing knuckles. What can I say? It was hard, sleeping back to back with her all those cold nights, watching her slowly pull off those long boots one by one, listening to her scrub down with wet sand by the spring, her skin-tight chaps off on the bank. Hard knowing that one wrong move or word would nail my scalp to her wall. Hard enough to make me hard. No, bulletproof.

Felt odd, strapping and buckling myself down with so much gear. But it didn't feel all too heavy- I had managed to eat and train some muscle back into me, and to be honest, I felt healthier and more awake than I had since I crawled out of the vault. Probably had something to do with the sun, I thought, looking up at that big ball of flame. Funny, I was almost used to it now.

A series of rattling noises behind me as Ashecroft bolted her cabin, leaving a hefty padlock on the front door. "Ready, Graves?"

I couldn't help but smile a bit at my new name. "As I'll ever be."

* * *

We made damn good time, heading dead southwest. Something to do with the excitement of being on a mission, I guess. For all her gears and spurs, Ashecroft was quick as they come- she slunk over dunes and through ravines like second nature. I let her take point- she knew the lay of the land, after all, and my Pipboy's map wasn't as accurate as I'd have liked. Everything west of Megaton seemed to be like this- rock robbed of topsoil, fine sandy sediment, the oddest of rock formations, gullies and ravines and chasms born from the quakes that followed the bombs.

But underestimating the wasteland is the biggest mistake you can make. I left the Pip-radio off- while the reception was actually a pretty useful tool for gauging your location, even on low volume, freakish, hard-shelled worms would pop out of the sand and rock, antennae flicking wildly, jaws snapping. Must not like the frequency.

"Dun pay 'em any mind. Plumb blind," pointed out Ashecroft as I leapt away from a pair of sharp pincers. "No ear fer music, though. No ears at all, literally."

"So I noticed," I muttered, tugging my bootstrap out of a sticky, hissing jaw. Centipede or millipede... hell, I didn't want to know.

Aside from our burrowing insect buddies and the occasional tumbleweed, the morning passed in dry, hot silence. The sound of falling rock now and then would make us stop and crouch low to the ground, Ashecroft drawing her revolving rifle in one smooth motion- but each time, it was either the wind or a scavenging animal. Lucky us.

It was only nearing noon that Ashecroft stopped suddenly, crouching behind a nearby jagged outcropping. I moved into cover behind her. "What is it?"

"Y'dun smell it?" Her voice was less than a whisper- I had to watch her lips to figure out the words. I sniffed at the air- so dry it chapped the inside of your nose, with a hint of dust, and a slight, hot breeze. And on that breeze...

Smoke.

I felt a jolt of anxiety spear through my belly- bloodlust, dread, hate- so much emotion, just from a dim waft of smoke. I nodded at Ashecroft. "Wind's going northwest," I whispered, watching the sand scuttle along the ground.

"North-northwest," she corrected, brow furrowed in thought. Shit, she knew already. She had this tracking game down flat. "Shouldn't be a soul 'round these parts."

Peeking my head out of cover and finding it all clear, I nodded to her again and we slipped out from the rock, moving forward up a craggy incline. Once we hit the top, we'd know what we were looking at. "Caravan?" I offered.

Ashecroft shook her head. "No good trails. We blaze 'em again 'n again, but they get buried." I cupped my hands and boosted her up onto a ledge, ignoring the bite of her spurs and clambering up after her, trying to not make too much noise. The smell of smoke grew ever stronger- oily, stinging. We saw it, now- curling up into the sky.

Nearly at the top, I rolled onto my back and checked my magazines as Ashecroft wriggled up on her belly, scanning the valley below. Twenty 7.62x51mm NATO rounds seated snugly; I popped the magazine back in.

"Take a gander, Graves."

I crawled up beside Ashecroft, wheezing a bit in the dust as I flicked up the lens caps and looked through the scope. "What- shit._ Shit._"

Insanity. What lay less than a mile below was what used to be part of a city, now all rubble and ruins. But what should have been deserted was swarming with activity- I focused the lens a bit more, and another wave of dread ran over me.

Like living torches, they clawed their way onto the skeletons of buildings, over each other, piling onto their victims mercilessly. Making an unsteady ring, a band of raiders armed with flamethrowers were dousing the freaks with fire, but it hardly slowed them- the twisted fucks only stopped once they were burned to the bones.

Ghasts. Emaciated, naked, open-mouthed, wide-eyed maniacs- their skin peeled away, leaving only the throbbing muscle underneath. Feral ghouls, some settlers called them- but raiders had their own name for them. They were worse than any ghoul.

Jericho had told me about them. About how they followed pain instead of ran from it, how they had lost all concepts of fear, loss, hopelessness. They were less than animals. All that was left was the want to eat, the want to-

"Graves, I said hold yer fire."

I blinked. Ashecroft was looking at me, a flicker of worry crossing her brow. "This ain't our fight. Let 'er go."

"Yeah," I whispered back. Like hell I'd take that on. A bit more scanning told the story- there was an entrance to the subway nearby, which the raiders were fighting to capture. They bit off more than they could chew, and now they were being eaten alive- and not figuratively. I almost felt bad for the raiders who tried to run, only to be tackled and pulled apart, skin and tongue saved for last. Almost.

We spent the better part of an hour on that crag, watching, waiting. Through this town was the best route to our checkpoint- trying to go around would put us through an underground cavern (which led into the subway anyways, bad idea) or a miniature mountain range which Ashecroft didn't want to deal with. With the bedroll covering us both as a makeshift ghillie sheet (hot and itchy as fuck, but better than having your face scraped off by ghasts), we shared a half-quart and looked down on the slaughter.

"And I thought my neighbors were bad," I muttered.

Ashecroft giggled. I kind of liked the sound.

That hour turned into two as we waited. The ghasts- a pack of thirty four, not counting the roasted ones- were just about full, dragging the unfinished raider bodies back down into the subway. A few stayed behind to gnaw on the bones of their charred comrades, but most, after hunting around for any stragglers, disappeared back beneath the earth.

I wiped the sweat out of my eye. Fuck, eye strain. "Ready?"

Ashecroft rolled the bedroll off of her and immediately began to scale down the crag. So I'm guessing that's "yes" in Ashecroftian.

I re-packed the bedroll hastily. "Hey, hey-" I skidded down after her, almost breaking my leg- "Slow down!"

She looked up at me from a lower ledge, her body pushed against the rock wall, as small a target as possible. "Gotta sneak by while they're full. At night, they dun git hungrier."

I stared at her blankly. She just grinned and shrugged sheepishly. Oh, that's just fucking_ great._

We were at the foot of that crag in record time and began to move forward. Not much cover- the ground was uneven, hiding us if were were prone, and the odd rock gave us some cover. But the closer were got to the station, the less cover we had. We finally stopped behind a rusting, long-dead car, less than a hundred yards between us and the zombies freaks.

Alright. Two ghasts chewing on the burnt arm of one of theirs. One sniffing at a puddle of blood and internal raider fluids. Another clawing up the side of a building, peeking in a second story window for any bones to pick his teeth with.

"I got eaters. Y'take other two."

"Roger." I laid the barrel of the M21 on the rusted engine block of the car, taking a few steadying breaths. Oh, hell. They were even uglier up close. One was missing an eye. "On three."

She had her revolving rifle's muzzle rested in the driver's seat window. "One. Two."

Two blasts went off so fast I thought my finger had slipped- but out of the corner of my eye, I saw the two cannibal zombies hit the cracked pavement. I followed her up- one round through the chest of one, and another tearing through the shoulder of the climber, sending him to the ground with a sick crunch.

We didn't waste any time. Taking point, I hauled ass across the pavement, cutting into the rubble-choked street to avoid the station. Ghasts had dulled senses, but even the deaf can feel a gunshot through the ground.

I vaulted into a window and pushed through what used to be a cafe, Ashecroft's boots close behind. I slung my rifle over my shoulder and drew my Colt M1911 in its place- but in mid-draw a ghast kicked down the back door and barreled toward us. He, she, it- slammed into me, taking me to the ground and immediately pushing its thumbs into my eyes. I yelled, panicked- and fired off four shots into its chest as its splintered nails began to slice my eyeballs. It snarled at me- a wet coughing, like someone drowning- vomiting blood and bits of person all over my face. My left hand went to its throat, struggling to keep those snapping teeth away, but a boot came out of nowhere and launched the bastard off of me.

Scooting back, clutching my face, I could see Ashecroft cutting the downed ghast's throat- twice, and then stomping on its head a few times. Groaning, I braced myself against a crumbling wall and pushed myself to my feet- only for Ashecroft to grab my hand and pull me through the back door.

"Y'alright?" she asked breathlessly, not looking back as she sprinted forward.

"Yeah, just-" I glanced back to see a few ghasts bursting from the timbers and plaster, eyes clouded and wild. _"FUCK!"_

Little did I know, even with full gear on me, I was very good at running.

* * *

The sun was sinking by the time we outran those sick fucks. If they weren't full, they would've been on us like scavs on booze- or that's what Ashecroft said, anyways.

Our pace slowed to a panting walk, always looking over our shoulders, taking long drinks from the same canteen. Another breeze picked up- this one from the west, chilly and telling of the usual cold, miserable wasteland night.

"That's the second time you've saved my ass," I said between breaths, looking over at Ashecroft. The sun low, there was no hat-shadow over her face, and I could see her cutting blue eyes as clear as day. Though there was something... distant in them.

She gave a short laugh, not meeting my eyes. "If y'keep countin', you'll forget yer name. Dun give it any mind." But there was a hint of a smile at the corner of her mouth, a look of pride crossing her face.

I smiled too. Life felt so much better when death was so close.


	19. You Cannot Fast Travel to this Location

_"Arefu, huh?"_

_West nodded, tucking a loose strand of blond hair behind her ear. "That's right. Built on what used to be an overpass, hangs right over a river. You'll know it when you see it; they've got a pretty big pasture for their Brahmin."_

_I ran a finger around the rim of my empty glass, trying to ignore the stink of stale cigarette smoke. "And there aren't any caravans that take that path?"_

_"They do, now and then." West reached over and played her finger over my glass, and a high whine began to skewer my ears._

_"Ouch."_

_"Sorry." She leaned back into her rickety chair, crossing her arms over her chest and staring into the blanket of gray that hid the cieling. "And trust me, I've tried to find others to roll with- Wolfgang, Crow, Hoff- but they've all said the same. No market there. I guess different traders run through Arefu."_

_I didn't doubt that. From where she pointed out the little settlement- more like outpost- on my Pipboy's map (her eyes wide with wonder all the while), the place was apparently caught flak from raiders and slavers and scavs alike, giving the place a low standing amongst most settlers. I mean, shit, in all likelihood these Arefu guys traded with raiders in exchange for being left in one piece._

_"I'll see what I can do," I promised, rising from the table. She smiled and shot me a quick "thanks" as I made my way out the door of Moriarty's saloon, relishing the sweet smell of (relatively) clean air. Christ, I don't know how she stood it. That bar was like Lucy's home away from home._

_Then again, I wasn't much different._

_

* * *

_

_"Fuck no."_

_"What? Why?"_

_"That shithole is in crossfire 24/7. We ain't going near there."_

_"I told Lucy West-"_

_"Too fuckin' bad. That place could have the freshest whores in the wasteland, and I wouldn't touch it with a ten-mile cock. Y'know what they do up there? Y'know why those raiders put up with 'em?"_

_"Bridges are hard to-"_

_"Wrong. They're fuckin' cannibals. A step away from being full-blown voodoo shits. I don't care if West promisied to suck you off, we are not going there."_

_And that was that._

_

* * *

_

More walking. Fuck, you have to learn to love walking more than life itself if you want to live out here. And running, too, if you want to live longer than half a day.

My shoulders were getting a bit sore from the pack and gear, but I ignored it, instead filling my time with swatting away carrion flies (innocently named, though they could pull your fingernail off with just a bit of team effort), avoiding sandtraps that might lead to some less-than-hospitable creatures, and scanning the rocky, rolling hills for any signs of life. But aside from the occasional pair of mating bloatflies-one of the most fucking disgusting things I've _ever_ seen, good _God_- the wastes were devoid of life.

Ashecroft spoke little to me as we trekked. The crags and ravines had given way to misshapen hills and hillocks, like tumors rising from beneath the earth- a nice change and easier on the body, but didn't provide much cover aside from a huge misplaced boulder here and there. Now and then we'd take shelter under one of those alien-looking outcroppings, savoring the shade.

She took off her hat, shaking the sand out of her short hair. "Y'holdin' up?" she asked, clapping me on the shoulder. I grunted a "yeah, I'm fine"- those long weeks spent in that slaver camp had left my legs shot to shit, and I had spent a good bit of time back at Ashecroft's cabin doing sprints and squats to get Jericho's training muscle back. Even so, my legs felt a little numb and shaky; having those ghasts follow us for a damn mile probably didn't help, either.

I sat down heavily against the rock, shrugging my gear off into the sand. It was dusk, at least. The usual unbearably hot over-a-hundred-degrees in the shade weather had dipped into a muggy, sweat-sticky haze, a clipped breeze here and there letting you know the night would be cold and merciless. Like it always was.

Ashecroft shook my shoulder with a bit more earnest. "Talk t'me, Gravesend. Y'sure y'can take this?" She stepped around me, crouching to meet me eye-to-eye. "This s'whatcha wanna do?"

She had asked me that fourteen times back at the cabin. No exaggeration: I fuckin' _counted._ But I knew this time was different. It may have been her personal vendetta, but... it was so much more, now that I was with her. "Positive," I muttered with a slight cough. She offered me the canteen, but I waved it away. "Not that weak. Not yet." I pushed myself to my feet and took to scooping up as many stones as I could find, outlining our campsite in a semicircle of stacked rocks. Wake-up rocks, Jericho called them. Most mutants didn't have the brainpower to avoid them, so if you ever started to pass out from morphine or exhaustion (or most commonly, both), you'd get an extra five seconds added to your life. Good deal, if you ask me. Useless against humans, of course, _but..._

Ashecroft glanced at my work, checking and re-checking the cylinder of her Colt Walker. Her eyes watched the darkening sky intently.

"'Bout that time, Gravesend," she called. I haphazardly dropped the rest of reddish, jagged stones and hurried back.

Sitting back to back, her facing east, me west, we waited, sheets of the bedroll wrapped around us for meager warmth. An hour passed, a little more, and then the sun's dying light disappeared beneath the western cliffs and a halved moon rose to its place, the temperature plummeting and our breath misting like woodsmoke. And as soon as those two switched places, the laughing began.

Not a normal, knee-slapping belly laugh. The kind of barking, hacking yelp that comes with pain, with being slapped in the face with reality a few times too many. The rose from the east, then the north- and bounced back and forth through the deepening darkness.

I clutched my M21 close. "They sound almost... human," I whispered.

"That's how they getcha," Ashecroft said pointedly, .56 magnum revolving rifle shouldered like an extension of herself.

Yeah, that's... reassuring.

The jackal-hyena-wolves of the wasteland aren't just dogs. Worse; they're stalkers, killers, graverobbers, hairless machines of throbbing muscle and tendon and bone. They can find a trail four days cold. Unless you bury your dead under a foot of rock, they'll dig them up. And their call- a deranged, lilting laugh that rolls across the wasteland like maddening wind. Jericho always knew how to juke them- always had a knack for stepping in their shit, for one. But Ashecroft...

"I'll take first watch," I said quietly as I squinted to scan the dunes and ridges, blinking the cold sweat out of my eyes. Funny how at night, all the moonshadows started to look kind of dog-shaped...

"Yer spent," she shot back, prodded me gently in the ribs with her elbow. "I got this. Git some shuteye."

Because, you know, counting rabid hounds is a great way to doze off. I shifted my weight slightly, letting Ashecroft rest against me a little more. It was going to be another long night.

* * *

_Another boring, filler bit. Just wanted to get it out of the way for some psycho violence next chapter._


	20. Feel

_Red wire to blue wire. Green to yellow. Orange to purple. Gray to... to... wait._

_"Jericho," I whispered, staring at the knotted web of colors in front of me. "The gray wire..."_

_Lying on his back behind a small stack of sandbags and cinderblocks, Jericho smoked a cigarette and watched the irradiated clouds drift by. "I just told you."_

_I tried to keep my hands from shaking, but I had just packed about five pounds of C4 and a handful of rusty nails and bolts into a payload that I was about to become far too intimate with for my liking. The gray wire in my fingers seemed a little too warm. "Jericho, for the love of God..."_

_"Gray wire to sensor module, complete the circuit. Not that hard, kid. Fuck. This is rookie shit, ya should know this by now."_

_Hurriedly, I connected the lone wire to the acoustic-sensitive device, and leapt behind the sandbags, nearly crushing Jericho. He shoved me off into the sand, and we waited for about thirty seconds._

_Nothing happened; the sensor module was stable._

_"There has to be a better way of testing those modules."_

_"If there were, we'd know by now, now wouldn't we?"_

* * *

The trek continued.

Even at high noon on a cloudless day, the sun burning through through the radiation-thinned atmosphere, I felt... good. The weight of the battle rifle slung over my shoulder, the low gusts of sand whipping around our boots, the jingle of Ashecroft's spurs, the warmth of wolf pelts hung at my belt, the sweat in my palms.

When had I last felt like this? The first few days after Jericho had taken me under his wing, maybe? Showing me how to shoot, hunt, and survive in this sick husk of a world? Before I knew just how wrong this place was. Just how deep below the surface I had been living.

But now- Ashecroft halted at a yet another cliffside, shading her face with a hand as she peered up the face of the crag. This one was a bit higher and steeper than the one we had climbed before... but I didn't feel fear, or doubt.

"What's the plan?" I asked Ashecroft as I caught up with her, flicking off a baby bloatfly that had landed on her hat. She turned to me with pursed lips.

"Up is th' shortest way. Th' roundabout'll-" she pointed left, then right- "take days. Hard going, rough rock, rougher critters. Banks of th' Potomac 'r bad country."

I didn't even blink. I almost mouthed off with a 'what are a few more dogs?' before I saw the seriousness in her eyes. "Then up it is."

We pulled off our packs and took out a grappling hook, a few steel stakes and two lengths of rope- usually used for tying up lawbreakers or hanging them for the vultures to pick clean, but aside from some bloodstains that refused to come out, they were just as good for rock climbing. Ashecroft clambered up the jagged rocks, rope tied around her waist, and I covered her at the base of the cliff, rifle in hand.

"See anything?"

"Can't see m'house from here. We're makin' good time. Don't see 'r tracks, either," she added, a hint of a complement in her voice.

I almost felt proud. Sure, it was her idea to hang the dog pelts from our belts, so they'd drag and obscure our footsteps, but still.

The ringing of the butt of her revolver against the stakes jarred me back into the present. "Third of th' way up. C'mon. It'll hold."

I shouldered the two bags and up I went. So I was afraid of heights, I admit it. You try living in a hole in the ground your entire life. But somehow, instead of the usual tightening in my stomach... I felt excitement. Fifty feet off the ground, and damn did I feel alive, even if I was panting once my fingernails scrabbled at the top, red in the face.

Ashecroft grinned at me. "Just kiddin'. More like a fourth."

I looked up and gritted my teeth. Like _hell_ that'd stop me.

* * *

We kept moving at a hard pace until dusk, only stopping to let the occassional dog or family of molerats waddle by. But soon, a great mesh-wire finger jabbed out of the horizon, and Ashecroft stopped.

"There," she said, as we took cover behind a boulder. "Top o' th' ridge. Broadcast tower."

I squinted at it, and on a whim, turned on my Pip-Boy's radio- keeping the volume barely audible- and began to tune it. Odd, really, how down in the Vault I had thought it was the most useful gadget ever. Nowadays, I only seemed to notice it one every few days.

Ashecroft watched, her expression growing grimmer by the second. "Anything?"

I shook my head. "Nothing's broadcasting around here for miles and miles. That I can find, anyway." I turned off the radio. "What were you expecting, exactly?"

She didn't say anything at first, just checking the cartridges of her revolving rifle, brow furrowed. "There were a few squatters 'n that building, right below the tower. Not raiders, but not settlers. Us Regulators let them stay as long as they broadcast our frequencies. Either they've gone bad, or they're dead."

Or both. I didn't bring that up. "Okay. Once it's nightfall, we scout it out. Could be the tower's malfunctioned, or they're in the middle of changing up frequencies, or something."

"Could be." Not likely is what really meant.

We hung low around that boulder, taking a few meager sips from the canteen and checking and re-checking our ammo as the sun dipped further and further. The first stars began to shine shyly in the east.

I drummed my fingers against the stock of my rifle.

Ashecroft cleaned the lens of her rifle's scope. She had bound her spurs in cloth, to muffle the jingling.

I don't know what it was, but... the urge came over me. "Ashecroft?"

She turned a blue eye my way. "Hm?"

"Why'd you take me in?"

She chuckled. "What kind 'a question is that?"

I cleared my throat, unsure of how to continue. "I mean... I stumbled into your ranch, skin and bones, half-dead. I could've been a raider, or a cannibal, or Talon Company-" she laughed a little at that, but I kept going- "or anyone. A complete psychopath. But you... took care of me. I could've stabbed you in the back-"

"You wouldn't have done that." Her voice was oddly soft.

"I know, _I_ wouldn't have, but I'm just saying-" I gestured vaguely at the rock and sand surrounding us. "You took in a total _stranger_. Could've let me die, could've turned the other way, let your Brahmin eat me, but... you didn't."

Ashecroft took a deep breath, laying her rifle across her lap. "Graves," she began.

"You gave me a name, too," I added. "You've known just a month, and we're on an honest-to-God mission together. Was it... did your dad teach you to be-"

"Graves. Listen. It's not just about survival, y'know? If I can't offer a helping hand to someone- well, I'm not really livin'. Y'know what I mean?"

I frowned. I wasn't used to wasteland philosophy. "... Somewhat."

"I mean, sure, I've had to put down some folk I'd just poured a drink for, but that's part of bein' a Regulator. Justice ain't about you. It's about everyone." She smiled, a sort of inward smile, not meant for me. "Regulator motto, right there. One of 'em, anyway. They could never decide."

"Far enough," I said, suddenly feeling... content. I put a hand on Ashecroft's shoulder. "Thank you. I mean it."

"Give it no mind, pardner."

"Alright." I looked back out over the wasteland, distant howls filling the night's silence, the sand now a shade of dark blue. "But... look, about your dad-"

"That story'll have to wait," she said, rising quickly. "Stars are out. Time to move."

* * *

If Jericho taught me one thing, it was how to scout. Ashecroft and I approached the tower from the west, moving from rock to rock, scanning the higher boulders for snipers, sprinting across any open ground. Finally, there was a small clearing where the tower and the management building were located. There wasn't much to it- a chain-link fence surrounded the area, webbed over with barbed wire. Sandbags were piled around the perimeter, makeshift machine guns nests. But it was all empty.

1911 in hand, I looked at Ashecroft expectantly. "Now?" I mouthed. She shook her head. So we waited.

Ten minutes passed, and God damn, I was aching to shoot something. Why did Ashecroft want to wait? What the hell was keeping us from kicking down that door?

I bent my head toward her ear. "Now?" I whispered, a little more intently. She bit her lip, and nodded.

We broke out of cover, but instead of sprinting, we crept our way to the maintenance building, Ashecroft in the lead as I walked backwards, covering our rear. We each took one side of the door, straining our ears for anything- a cough, a snore, anything.

In the half-moon's light, I saw three of Ashecroft's fingers outlined against the starry sky. I nodded, wishing I had a grenade.

_One. Two._

_Three._

I torqued the handle and threw my shoulder into the door with a grunt- only to meet resistance, as I knocked back someone just about to open the door. Ashecroft was in just a second behind me, and we quickly scanned the room.

Five men. One was on a cot, bleeding. But three were already on their feet, and the one I had knocked down was standing up. Shit.

I lunged forward, pistol whipping the fallen man in the face, feeling his nose give under the 1911's butt as I kicked in his knee. He grunted in pain and tried to tackle me, but another whip to the eye made his gasp and fall to his remaining knee. A wrestled him into a headlock and pressed my pistol to his head. "Nobody fucking move!"

Silence. Ashecroft had her rifle trained on one of the other three- but we were still outgunned, three to one. One of the others was using his body to cover the wounded man on the cot, his hand on the gun at his hip. The tension was so tight, I could just feel it- about to snap, all hell to break loose. I wanted it. Lusted for it.

Then...

"Jesus... that you, Ashecroft?" The one with the submachine lowered it, looking relieved. "Thought it was-"

"Someone else?" she asked quietly. "What's all this, Schauffen?"

No one moved. The only light in the room came from a dusty naked bulb, hanging from a wire in the ceiling, swinging back and forth, throwing hellish shadows on the walls. All eyes were on the middle-aged, balding fellow. A bead of sweat ran down his forehead. "Just... helping some travelers, Ashecroft. Just like you told me to."

Ashecroft took a step forward, still sighted in on the raider. "There's a marked difference between traveler and raider, Schauff. And a marked price."

Schauffen's eyes flashed with alarm. "Wait- no! You don't understand! They forced me-!"

_**BANG**_

A shot fired- but from where? The man on the cot had grabbed his pistol. But that was all it took- one of the raiders grabbed Schauffen, using him as a human shield. Ashecroft put a round through the throat one of the standing raiders as I unloaded my magazine into Schauffen, the bullets passing through his soft flesh into the man hiding behind him. Two bullets buried itself into the chest of my struggling hostage, who had tried to draw his knife as I fired, and I pushed the dead weight forward onto the cot with the other man. He cried out as his wounds were crushed, but I ended that with a bullet through his head.

And that was it. My nerves were on fire, the adrenaline pumping, and I felt... I felt...

I looked at Schauffen's body. Seven gaping holes in his torso. Wide dead eyes, still pleading.

Nothing.

I felt nothing.

Christ, what had I become?

"Graves."

I couldn't face Ashecroft right now. Not like this, covered in blood. I wasn't Graves. I wasn't the scared boy from Vault 101. I was... something else. Something that had been born out of the wastes. A beast.

"_Graves_. Hey. Talk to me."

I shook my head, clearing my mind of all sorts of horrid images. "Yeah. Yeah. I'm fine." No, I wasn't. My muscles were rigid, numbed. My breath hitched.

"Give me the gun, Graves," she said gently. "Come on."

"No. No, no, no," I muttered, holstering my pistol. "I told you. I'm... okay."

She reached out and touched my neck. I almost recoiled, but then I realized... I couldn't feel her fingers. "You're not. One of 'em nicked you. Think they got a big bleeder."

Oh. Great.

* * *

One length of itchy brown bandage tight around my neck and one pile of looted corpses outside later, we were sitting under that same naked bulb, the smell of blood and sweat and gunpowder still hanging in the musty air.

Ashecroft took a long drink from her canteen and held it out to me. I shook my head. She took another drink, twirling her revolver absently. "Y'did good, Graves," she said. "You proved yerself." The words floated there like smoke in the awkward silence.

A few minutes passed. "Ashecroft... how well did you know that guy? Schau-whatever?"

She looked thoughtfully back at the door, where we had stacked the bodies up for the vultures and dogs. "I... didn't really know 'im, Graves. My pa stationed 'im here. But he was always nice to me."

"I didn't mean to kill him."

She didn't say anything. She just curled up by the radio controls.

"He was going to die, anyway," I said. "That's what you Regulators do. One strike, you're out."

Ashecroft stiffened in her bedroll.

"Maybe not you, but someone with a badge would've put him in the ground eventually." I laughed, a mirthless laugh. "I mean, shit, that might be me rotting out there one day, if things go badly between us."

She might've turned around, to look at me, to say something. But I had already slammed the door of the maintenance shack, a white-knuckled grip on my rifle, standing guard next to the other lifeless corpses.

Fuck. Of all the sins I'd done out there... I had never been so disgusted with myself.

* * *

_Been a while._


	21. Red Sky Dead Sky

It didn't go far. I ducked behind the sandbags, flinching as the blast showered us with sand and fragments of rock and shrapnel.

"That was fuckin' pathetic." And really, it was- I had practiced throwing roundish rocks for days, now. Jericho dropped another grenade into my hand. RGD-5, Soviet was the model- he had quizzed me enough on weapon terminology in a month to cover my entire education back in the Vault under with Mr. Brotch.

"We didn't have a lot of space, underground. For throwing things." It was true. By the time I was sixteen, I could touch the ceiling of most rooms by jumping.

"Less excuses. More throwing."

And again, I lobbed that little party favor of destruction. Again, it only went... far enough to still feel the shockwave shudder through the earth. Disappointment settled in my belly- one grenade was usually enough to buy a day's worth of rations. That Jericho was letting me train with the real thing was kind of an honor, and I hated letting him down. Anyone would. Not like I looked forward to living on vodka and cigarette butts for the next week, either.

I sighed, held out my hand, and waited for the next live grenade. Instead, Jericho grabbed my wrist and twisted it painfully towards me. I yelped, nearly biting off my own hand, it was so close to my face.

"Concentrate," he hissed. "Take everything you hate, you fear, you want to be gone- and crush it. Crush it until it's fucking nothing, until it's less than nothing. Like it wants to escape through your fingers, but you won't let it. Until it never moves again. Then throw it the fuck away."

My hand involuntarily began to curl into a fist. A series of images flashed across my mind- the Overseer, my father, Amata, Butch, the reflection of myself in the bathroom mirror, rage, rage, rage- all those thoughts I had crowded back into the back of my skull.

The next grenade fucking_ sailed_.

* * *

I didn't go the saloon often. It smelled... _odd_. Cigarette smoke and sweat and and Moriarty and cheap booze and sex with dust in all the wrong cracks.

That, and after I made an ass of myself trying to keep Jericho from fucking Nova, my pride had something to do with it, too. How was I supposed to know that wastelanders had evolved to be immune to venereal diseases? Christ.

One evening Jericho stumbled into his shack, where I had been studying a tattered issue of Guns & Ammo. I had started cataloging bullet calibers and gun types into my Pip-Boy- probably the most use I had made of that chunk of plastic since I left the Vault. Looking up from the faded pages as he stripped off his holster and chest rig, hanging his guns on the wall- he never left the shack without them, even if he was taking a piss- I finally dared myself to ask a question that had been curdling in my head for weeks now.

"Jericho?" A grunt in response. So far, so good. "So, uh... where did you, you know... come from?"

"Saloon." He belched, and the air of the shack became suddenly bitter. "Gonna give me a time out, Mr. Dry-Dick?"

Ha ha. That was a new one. But despite that his blood was probably fifty percent vodka, I knew that Jericho was dodging the question. Crafty bastard, but not crafty enough for me. "You know what I mean."

He gave me a long, hard look as he collapsed onto his rotten couch, kicking his feet up onto the coffee table. The springs whined under his weight. "No, you don't know what you mean." I opened my mouth, but he cut right on ahead. "Where are you from, kid?"

"Vault 10-"

"Wrong. You're from Megaton."

"No, I-"

"Kid, I had sort of expected you to have figured this one out, so that means one of the two people in this house is really fucking stupid. And I don't think it's me."

I crossed my arms. "You_ really_ think-"

"Where I was a fuckin' day ago doesn't matter. You don't measure lives by years in the wasteland, kid. It goes by _hours_. Now that you've crawled out of your hole, you're no different. The name of your fucking hole doesn't matter to the local raider or pack of hounds. Or me."

My teeth were clenched so hard my jaw began to hurt.

"No comeback? And it's what you do best. I'm disappointed."

That was it. I stormed out of the shack, not even blinking at the frigid night air. My anger kept me warm.

Why was it that Jericho became so damn... right when he was drunk? I stalked up and down the catwalks of Megaton until I was at the highest point, and I could gaze out across the wasteland for miles. But as I squinted, I couldn't exactly figure out what direction Vault 101 was in- maybe it was just the moonlight.

God fucking dammit.

* * *

I shuffled from one foot to the other. He just stood there. I looked over, and cleared my dry throat.

"Nice weather we're having."

"Temperature: 101 degrees Fahrenheit. Wind speed: two knots per hour."

Well that's certainly... informative. "Uh huh. So... what's it like, being the deputy?"

"I am programmed to fully enjoy dispensing justice and maintaining order. Therefore; yes."

"Sure, sure. Can I see your hat?"

"That is a restricted action. Do not touch my hat."

"Right. Sorry."

* * *

"Well, if it ain't the talk of the fuckin' town."

I lifted my head from the bar counter as Jericho took a stool next to me, barking at Gob for a shot of a vodka. God, I was tired. After that entire bomb mess with Burke, no one would shut up about how I was a hero and all that shit. Gob offered me free drinks for the night, Nova a victory fuck (which I politely declined), and Moira gave me the offer of being the co-author of her new book, some kind of survival guide- I'd probably regret that one later.

"Had a way to blow us all to high hell, and didn't even tell me." He almost sounded hurt. Almost.

I grunted, laying my head back on my arms. Whiskey and I didn't get along. "I've spent weeks trying to disarm it. Like I'd let all that go to waste."

Jericho chuckled, downing his vodka in single gulp. "Would've been a sweet deal. A top suite at Tenpenny Tower, the wreckage of Megaton to be looted, less competition out there in the waste."

"You almost sound like you would've done it, were you in my place."

"Maybe I would've." Another shot of vodka. "Maybe."

The cold feeling in my stomach told me he wasn't entirely kidding.

* * *

Less than a mile outside Megaton, there's an oddly flat stretch of plain. All across it are scattered all matter of markers- some simple, plain bits of wood or metal, some elaborately carved into crosses or likenesses. Every time Jericho and I passed, I could help but marvel at it.

"Fuck's wrong with you? Never seen a boneyard befo-" He caught himself. "Oh. Yeah. Guess you haven't."

"I've seen slides of them," I snapped defensively. Well... not really. Just the Tomb of the Unknowns, in Arlington.

He snorted. "Half of these graves don't even have any bones in 'em. Most just disappear in the waste- that's the way raiders do it." Jericho seemed thoughtful for a moment, that wrinkled brow furrowed. "Unless you're a real asshole, and they just eat you."

"Charming. Pleasant to know even raiders have respect for the dead," I said dryly. One of the tombstones had been carved into the figure of an angel- or had tried to be. Maybe it was weathered or the sculptor had never seen an angel before, 'cause it looked like a demon straight out of Hell. "Never had anything like that in the Vault."

"So what'd ya do? Toss 'em out the hatch?"

"No, no. Whenever someone died, we melted them down in acid and then purified their liquids for use as water."

Jericho looked at me blankly.

"What?"

"I didn't say anythin'."

* * *

Something had happened to the atmosphere, after the bombs dropped. It was... thinner, somehow. Or warped. Or had holes in it. I wasn't exactly sure how, but the books of nuclear physics, godless Communists, nuclear winters and mutually assured destruction I dug up on our travels seemed to explain as much. In a way, I wasn't surprised- in all the pictures of the moon I had seen back in the Vault, it had always looked... serene, moonlight a soft glow. But in reality, on the surface, when it was full- it was like a second sun, but bathing the world in a sickly blue light, painful to look at.

I hated that moon.

In Jericho's shack, I would often lay awake at night. Not from the cold, or the hunger, or Jericho's hellish snoring- but the howling. Every full moon, those hounds would come together and wail- and listening to it made me feel like I was dying, the whole world just slowly darkening around me.

* * *

_His new name... Graves. Kind of nice, in a way. Better than his old one._


	22. Womb

War.

War never changes.

It was Cain, the unloved son, who so consumed with rage slew his brother Abel. But the guilt could not be hidden- for beneath the soil wetted by Abel's red tears, the blood of the brother cried out to God. But not in a plea of mercy for his brother Cain.

No. It was a howl for vengeance.

From that despoiled earth grew mankind. The man, born from hate. The woman, born from cruelty. The child, born from ignorance. For thousands of years they stalked the earth, carving a warped path of destruction and corruption within which they bred and grew ever more sinful. Try as God might, tide nor wind nor storm would cleanse the earth of such a plague.

But as mankind defied God, ultimately, their very own pride defied them. One bright morning, 2077 years after the son of God's sacrifice, four great hands of nuclear fire descended from heaven and immolated all life with a single touch. The seas dried in an instant, leaving only a salty lymph. The earth convulsed as long-sleeping volcanoes erupted, great chasms were torn open in the earth's skin, and towering mountain ranges rose up to pierce the clouds of soot.

God beheld the blackened earth, where the sand and stones still glowed a bloody red from the flames, shrouded in the silent darkness of a nuclear winter, and was sorrowful.

The black clouds parted, and a harsh sun gave light to the earth, showing a dead land no creature could live upon.

From the smoldering ashes, man raised itself up, bones standing stark against charred black flesh. It opened its blind white eyes, and from a lipless mouth, whispered unto a deaf sky.

"Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds."

And God was afraid.

* * *

_There are some things best not adopted from gameplay, but the Fallout prologue... deserved a place._


	23. The True Nature of Pain

_"Jericho?"_

_"What, kid?"_

_"... Nevermind."_

* * *

The hounds had howled all night.

I don't know what it was. Part of me just wanted... to throw down my rifle, rip off my clothes, and run with them. Forget everything. I would hunt and kill and fuck and die in ignorance.

But that wasn't who I was. It could never be.

* * *

The graveyard shift that night took on a literal meaning. To stay awake, I spent the first hour dragging the corpses we had piled outside away from the radio tower and dumping them into a nearby ravine. The bastards stank like shit without even the rot setting in, and I didn't appreciate the idea of guard duty with a stack of pungent corpses. Not as if they had anything of use for us, anymore- Ashecroft and I had looted them clean- and it was an unnecessary risk to have fresh meat where the hounds might track us.

Odd thing, really. During out first bouts of training, Jericho told me that one a hound gets a scent, it remembers it forever- to the point where a decade can pass, and out of nowhere, a moribund hound will attack a well-armed caravan aiming for only one man. The marked one.

Kind of a nice feeling, in an odd way. Knowing that someone out there remembered you. Even if their end goal is to murder and eat you.

Once the bodies were dumped and covered in rock and dirt, I became restless, pacing the outside of the tower shack, staring at my dim shadow in the moonlight. Was this really the best course of action, following Ashecroft? We could be on a suicide mission, looking for her father's killers. Maybe she was going to turn me in at the next Regulator outpost, fetch a nice bounty for a low-laying raider. I had to kill her before she killed me. Now, while she slept. Take her rations, her uniform. I'd pass off as a Regulator at a distance, keep to myself. Or maybe-

I drew Ashecroft's bowie knife and pressed it against my palm. No blood- just hard enough to feel the edge.

No.

When... did I start thinking like_ this?_

What the_ fuck_ was _wrong with me_?

Without her, I would be dead. I needed to stop thinking like- like a raider, only looking out for himself, less than a Goddamn animal. That's not who I was.

_Lucy West. Arefu. The Megaton bomb. Burke. Simms._

I leaned against the cement wall of the shack, knifepoint still at my palm. Why did Jericho take me in, if I was like this? A hand-wringing, bleeding heart Vault reject. What did he see?

My eyes turned up to the scarred face of the moon, its light so harsh it may as well have been day.

Maybe he saw... potential. For what he had always wanted to be.

_We are killing you._

Killing who?

* * *

That pathetic, simmering anger and angst kept me warm all night.

When the sun rose, I was almost surprised. I had hoped it had burnt out and died when I wasn't looking.

* * *

Deep breaths. Steady that heart rate.

Okay. I stopped pacing, stretched a little, tousled my hair to get the sand out. Okay.

As the orange of dawn crawled over the horizon, making the wisps of clouds glow, bathing the world in a sickly hue, I readied myself.

I knocked on the door, three times. The rap of my knuckles on metal seemed to echo for miles. "Ashecroft?"

Too impatient. I grit my teeth and opened the door, hinges grinding- and ended up banging heads with Ashecroft. She took a few steps back, rubbing at her head. "Ouch."

I rubbed at my jaw in turn. Yeah, that'd bruise. "Uh, sorry." Great icebreaker, you stupid fuck. "So... look, Ashecroft. I... " Still holding her forehead, she still managed to look dignified, even with her hat, jacket and duster thrown over the radio terminal. It was... kind of jarring, to see her without the uniform, the bandoliers. Never got used to it.

Actually, it was a little warm in there. She had turned on her battery flashlamp for the night, filling the small room with the smell of burning filament, and had just turned her back to switch if off. I ran my eyes over the shack- the guns, kevlar inserts, ammo and rations we'd looted from Schauffen's "friends" were in an organized row along the far wall. A can of rations sawed open, only half eaten- the emptiness in my stomach stung, but I pushed it aside. Biding for time, I shrugged out of my duster as well, throwing it onto the bloodstained cot and propped my rifle against the bedpost. My eyes met hers, and I held my ground. "Look. I'm... sorry. I owe you my li- no, I owe you everything. You could've let me die. I have no reason to doubt you now, partner." I bit the inside of my cheek. The last word came out on its own. "So... I'm sorry. About last night. I wasn't thinking. At all."

She gave me a long look, then walked over to the radio terminal and sat switchsaddle on a swivel chair. She beckoned me over to the other chair. Apprehensively, I wiped a spatter of blood off of it, and sat facing her. Jesus, her eyes could burn holes through lead.

"Graves." She sighed. "There's a long road 'head 'a me, but at th' quick, it's _my_ road. Do what ya need t' do. If ya wanna bail..." she shrugged, trying to lesson the blow of the word. "It's _yer_ life, Graves. Not mine."

I looked down, studying the wrinkles in her shirt and trousers, her cowboy boots crossed at the ankles. She didn't need me, or I her, but... She granted me a new name, Goddamn it. I looked up, fighting the urge to count the freckles on her nose. "No. No, I- I promised that we'd hunt the fucks who murdered your father. I won't walk." I'd rather die.

"'Sides," she added, "Ya hadn't killed 'n a while. People, I mean. I won't hold it against ya for..."

I shook my head. "That's not an excuse." And it wasn't. When I mowed down Schauffen, I didn't feel anything. When I dumped his bullet-ridden body in the ravine, I felt even less. But... I wasn't ready to tell her that. "But about Schau-"

"Had t' be done," she said solemnly. "He had always... _straddled_ that line. But y'know what _does_ piss me off? An all-night watch," she jabbed, the cheerful tone back in her voice. "Should've had me relieve you. Ya look like ya've marched to hell 'n back."

My eyes did seem a little sore, but oddly enough, I felt... more awake, somehow. Like that night full of fury had pulled something in me out of hibernation. "It's fine. I dozed a little."

"That's even worse! Call yerself a sentry?"

I chuckled. She stuck out her hand, and I grabbed it firmly, giving it a strong shake. But I didn't expect her to pull me into a grizzly hug, patting my back and squeezing tight. "We got this, pardner. We got this."

With my cheek resting against hers, I almost dared to believe her.

* * *

_Someone once told me that war is 10% combat, 90% waiting and thinking about combat._

_But there will be combat next chapter. Finally. Seems like it's better to keep things shorter like this. _

_Or maybe you like longer chapters. Tell me what you think. I'll listen.  
_


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